Nancy Mitford by Selina Hastings. 
Nancy Mitford was witty, intelligent, often acerbic, a great tease and an acute observer of upper-class English idiosyncrasies. With the publication of her novels, above all The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate, she became a bestselling author and a household name. 
An inveterate writer of letters, she wrote almost daily to, among others, Evelyn Waugh, Harold Acton, Diana Cooper, and of course her sisters - a correspondence that forms the basis of this biography, written with the full co-operation of Nancy Mitford's family and friends.
Selina Hastings captures equally the gaiety and frivolity and the unhappy truth of Nancy Mitford's life: her failed marriage and her long, unfulfilled relationship with 'the Colonel' contrasting sharply with her literary celebrity and glittering social success.