Wait for Me!

Memoirs

Deborah Mitford, Duchess of Devonshire; with Charlotte Mosley

Picador

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A NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE

Deborah Mitford, Duchess of Devonshire, is the youngest of the famously witty brood that includes the writers Jessica and Nancy. Wait for Me! chronicles her remarkable life, from an eccentric but happy childhood roaming the Oxfordshire countryside, to tea with her sister Unity and Adolf Hitler in 1937, to her marriage to Andrew Cavendish, the second son of the Duke of Devonshire. Written with intense warmth, charm, and perception, Wait for Me! is a unique portrait of an age of tumult, splendor, and change. “Touching . . . moving . . . [and] compelling as a portrait of a vanishing world” (The Wall Street Journal).

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Book Excerpts

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Chapter 1 We Are Seven

Blank. There is no entry in my mother’s engagement book for 31 March 1920, the day I was born. The next few days are also blank. The first entry in April, in large letters, is ‘KITCHEN CHIMNEY SWEPT’. My parents’ dearest wish was for a big family of boys; a sixth girl was not worth recording. ‘Nancy, Pam, Tom, Diana, Bobo, Decca, me’, intoned in a peculiar voice, was my answer to anyone who asked where I came in the family.

The sisters were at home and Tom was at boarding school for this deeply disappointing event, more like

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Reviews

Praise for Wait for Me!

“Charming, captivating, and at times wickedly funny. ‘Wait for Me!’ was the refrain of young ‘Debo’, the baby of the family. Now ninety, she has caught up beautifully.” —Time

“A national treasure.” —Sarah Lyall, The New York Times

“Wait for Me! . . . teem[s] with memories of love, war, betrayal, heartbreak, housekeeping, and frolic . . . tantalizing . . . riveting.” —Liesl Schillinger, The New York Times Book Review

“Admirably done, cannily blending disclosure and reticence in a charming book that kept me riveted.” —Miranda Seymour, The Guardian (London)

“[Debo] is in possession of what I can only describe as a uniquely Mitford-esque sensibility: loving but unsentimental . . . able to find the ridiculous in almost anything.” —Rachel Cooke, The Observer (London)

Praise for Counting My Chickens . . .

“More entertaining than anything I could say about it.” —P. J. Kavanagh, The Spectator

Praise for Home to Roost

“Nobody with an interest in the past century could fail to be interested in the gossip, which extends to just about everyone of interest.” —Matthew Bell, The Independent on Sunday

“Behind the wit and quips, there is something else stronger and more rigorous. She goes to the ballet at Covent Garden with the Queen Mother and notices that throughout the entire performance, the Queen Mother’s back ‘never once touched the chair.’ That is how the Duchess is too—never a slouch, never a saggy moment, even in grief alert, attentive, observant.” —Adam Nicolson, The Spectator

Praise for In Tearing Haste

“One of the great twentieth-century correspondences . . . Bursting with wit and conviviality.” —James Purdon, The Observer (London)

“Beguiling . . . Hugely enjoyable . . . What these letters so wonderfully demonstrate is an unfailing appetite for life.” —Anne Chisholm, The Spectator

Praise for The Mitfords

“Funny, loving, sparkly, snarky, heartbreaking, chilling, gossipy, wise.” —Amanda Lovell, O, The Oprah Magazine
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About the Author

Deborah Mitford, Duchess of Devonshire; with Charlotte Mosley

Deborah Vivien Freeman-Mitford Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire, was brought up in Oxfordshire, England. In 1950 her husband, Andrew, the 11th Duke of Devonshire, inherited extensive estates in Yorkshire and Ireland as well as Chatsworth, the family seat in Derbyshire, and Deborah became chatelaine of one of England’s great houses. She is the author of Counting My Chickens and Home to Roost, among other books, and her letters have been collected in The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters and In Tearing Haste: The Correspondence of the Duchess of Devonshire and Patrick Leigh Fermor. Following her husband’s death in 2004, she moved to a village on the Chatsworth estate.

Deborah Mitford, Duchess of Devonshire
Charlotte Mosley

©Bridget Flemming
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Available Formats and Book Details

Wait for Me!
Memoirs
Deborah Mitford, Duchess of Devonshire; with Charlotte Mosley

Trade Paperback

Trade Paperback
Picador
September 2011
Trade Paperback
ISBN: 9780312610647
ISBN10: 0312610645
5 1/2 x 8 1/4 inches, 368 pages, Includes sixteen pages of black-and-white photographs
$18.00
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Hardcover

Learn more about this edition
Hardcover
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
November 2010
Hardcover
ISBN: 9780374207687
ISBN10: 0374207682
6 x 9 inches, 368 pages, Includes 32 Pages of Black-and-White Illustrations, an Appendix, and an Index
$28.00
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e-Book Agency

Learn more about this edition
e-Book Agency
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
November 2010
e-Book Agency
ISBN: 9781429917933
ISBN10: 1429917938
368 pages
$9.99
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