Wait For Me! Memoirs Of The Youngest Mitford Sister

Author: Deborah Devonshire

Stock information

General Fields

  • : $24.99 AUD
  • : 9781848541917
  • : Hachette
  • : John Murray
  • :
  • : 0.29
  • : May 2011
  • : 198mm X 129mm X 26mm
  • : United Kingdom
  • : 22.99
  • : April 2011
  • :
  • :
  • : books

Special Fields

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  • :
  • : Deborah Devonshire
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  • : Paperback
  • :
  • :
  • :
  • : 941.082092
  • : good
  • :
  • : 384
  • : BGA
  • : Illustrations, facsims., ports.
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Barcode 9781848541917
9781848541917

Description

Deborah Devonshire is a natural writer with a knack for the telling phrase and for hitting the nail on the head. She tells the story of her upbringing, lovingly and wittily describing her parents (so memorably fictionalised by her sister Nancy); she talks candidly about her brother and sisters, and their politics (while not being at all political herself), finally setting the record straight. Throughout the book she writes brilliantly about the country and her deep attachment to it and those who live and work in it. As Duchess of Devonshire, Debo played an active role in restoring and overseeing the day-to-day running of the family houses and gardens, and in developing commercial enterprises at Chatsworth. She tells poignantly of the deaths of three of her children, as well as her husband's battle with alcohol addiction. Wait For Me is enthralling and a total joy, full of the author's sympathetic wit (which she is not afraid to use on herself).

Promotion info

At the age of ninety, Debo (as she is known to all her friends) looks back on a life lived at a cracking pace.

Awards

Shortlisted for Galaxy National Book Awards: Tesco Biography of the Year 2010.

Reviews

'A touching, funny memorial to a vanished age' -- Stephen Moss, Guardian 'I was captivated ... unputdownable' - Bel Mooney, Daily Mail


'The Duchess is an exhilarating writer, with a great gift for storytelling, and a prose style of elegant simplicity' - Jane Shilling, Evening Standard


'Wait For Me! proves irresistible, even for die-hard Mitphobes like me' - Craig Brown, Mail on Sunday


'Funny and sad, the irresistible combination that is one of the secrets of charm' - Daily Telegraph


'She [Debo] is in possession of what I can only describe as a uniquely Mitford-esque sensibility; loving but unsentimental; devoid of self-pity; unwilling to bore others with her own travails; able to find the ridiculous in almost anything ... these qualities - disarmingly rare in Oprahworld - are , to me, indisputably admirable' - Observer


'Admirably done, cannily blending disclosure and reticence in a charming book that kept me riveted, both by what is said ... and what remains firmly under wraps' - Daily Telegraph Biographies of the Year


'I cried several times during Deborah Devonshire's memoir ... the calibre of events, cast and author could hardly be higher and Debo has potted an extraordinary life (though ordinary to her) with kindness and humour' - Rachel Johnson, Observer

Author description

Deborah Devonshire, the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, was brought up in Oxfordshire. In 1950 her husband Andrew, the 11th Duke of Devonshire, inherited estates in Yorkshire and Ireland as well as Chatsworth, the family seat in Derbyshire, and Deborah became chatelaine and housekeeper of one of England's greatest and best-loved houses. Following her husband's death in 2004, she moved to a village on the Chatsworth estate where she now lives.