In Tearing Haste

by FERMOR, PATRICK LEIGHDEVONSHIRE, DEBORAH

• ISBN13: 9781590173589
• ISBN10: 1590173589
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-10-12
• Publisher: New York Review Books

Summary

In the spring of 1956, Deborah, Duchess of Devonshire, youngest of the six legendary Mitford sisters-invited the writer and war hero Patrick Leigh Fermor to visit Lismore Castle, the Devonshiresrs" house in Ireland. The halcyon visit sparked a deep friendship and a lifelong exchange of sporadic but highly entertaining letters. There rarely have been such contrasting styles: Debo, unashamed philistine and self-professed illiterate (though suspected by her friends of being a secret reader), darts from subject to subject, dashing off letters in her "whizz-bang planchette style"; while Paddy, polyglot, widely read prose virtuoso, replies in the fluent, polished manner that has earned him recognition as one of the finest writers in the English language. Prose notwithstanding, the two friends have much in common: a huge enjoyment of life, youthful high spirits, warmth, generosity, and lack of malice. There are glimpses of President Kennedyrs"s inauguration, weekends at Sandringham, stag hunting in France, filming with Errol Flynn, and, above all, life at Chatsworth, the great house that Debo spent much of her life restoring, and of Paddy in the house that he and his wife, Joan, designed and built on the southernmost peninsula of Greece.

Author Biography

Charlotte Mosley lives in Paris and has worked as a publisher and journalist. She is the editor of Love from Nancy: The Letters of Nancy Mitford, The Letters of Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh, and The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters.

Patrick Leigh Fermor is the author of many books, including the NYRB Classics A Time to Keep Silence, Between the Woods and the Water, A Time of Gifts, Mani, and Roumeli. He now divides his time between Greece and England.

The Dowager Duchess of Devonshire is the last surviving of the six noted Mitford sisters. She became chatelaine and housekeeper of one of England’s greatest and best-loved houses, but following her husband Andrew’s death in 2004, she moved to a village on the Chatsworth Estate, where she now lives.