Author(s): John Saumarez Smith

Biography & Memoir

A brilliant personality, remarkable novelist and legendary letter writer, it is widely known that Nancy Mitford was also a bookseller. From 1942-6 she worked in Heywood Hill's famous shop in Curzon Street, and effectively ran it when the male staff were called up for war service. After the war she left to live in France but maintained an abiding interest in the shop, its stock, and its many and varied customers who themselves form a cavalcade of the literary stars of post war Britain. Her letters to Heywood advise on recent French titles that might appeal to him and his customers, gossip engagingly about life in Paris, and enquire anxiously about the reception of her own books while seeking advice about new titles to read. In return Heywood kept her up to date with customers and their foibles, and with aspects of literary and bookish life in London. Charming, witty and irresistible the correspondence gives brilliant insights into a world that has almost disappeared.