Mary Beard writes:

She writes, with extraordinary composure, to Treuhaft about how ‘ODD’ it is to be dying, and makes tentative plans with Deborah for visits, bearing the projected ‘deadline (mot juste)’ in mind. ‘DO come to me funeral, about nine months or a year off accdg to the Dr.’ In fact, she lasted only a month after she first noticed she was coughing up blood. The last letter in the collection? This is often a tricky decision for editors. But Sussman has done well. He ends with a letter written in the final days of her life, to Mitford’s specification, by her assistant, and posted the day after she died. It is to the head of Service Corporation International, one of the giants of the American funeral industry, asking if SCI would pay for her cremation. As it was put: ‘Ms Mitford feels that you should pay the bill. In her own words: “after all, look at all the fame I’ve brought them!”’

(LRB 5 July 2007)

Available in a paperback edition

Weidenfeld | hardback 744 pp. |ISBN: 9780297607458