The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family

At about this time she was contacted by a friend of mine, Sunday Times journalist Brigid Keenan, who was writing a piece on Nancy and wanted Decca to comment on Nancy’s statement that ‘Sisters are a shield against life’s cruel adversity.’ Decca replied, ‘But sisters are life’s cruel adversity!’

Sydney was a good manager, and was of the school of thought that ‘a lazy master makes a lazy servant’. A note among her papers states that one of the reasons she so loved being aboard a sailing ship was ‘the beautiful cleanness . . . there is no luxury where there is dirt; and where everything is shining clean there is luxury’.7