There was much worse drama when Linda, aged twelve, told the daughters of neighbours, who had come to tea, what are supposed to be the facts of life. Linda's presentation of the "facts" had been so gruesome that the children left Alconleigh howling dismally, their nerves permanently impaired, their future chances of a sane and happy sex life much reduced.

Nancy Mitford's considerable literary output--biography, journalism, translation, fiction--has been somewhat eclipsed by the biographical extravagance of her extraordinary family: her sisters Unity and Diana (the wife of Sir Oswald Mosley) were enthusiastic fascists who notoriously cultivated the friendship of Adolf Hitler; another sister, Jessica, ran away to America and became a left-wing journalist, later writing The American Way of Death. Her case has not been helped by her subject-matter, for the milieu of the wealthy upper classes and their deep-rooted snobbishness and casual bigotry is one that might easily repel a reader who misses the irony, satire and the surfacing of darker concerns that characterise the books. A shame, for she is one of the true originals of modern English writing. --Burhan Tufail