Home > The Magazine > The Week

Saturday 22 November 2008

Dare to dream and make your ultimate trip a reality

The latest culture as recommended by our staff

Michael Henderson

Michael Henderson suggests

Email registration

Free weekly email update

Great products and special offers for Spectator readers

Click here for great value events

Click here for exclusive articles, offers, tasting notes and discussion

Diary

Deborah Devonshire

Wednesday, 19th September 2007

In the wake of my niece by marriage, Charlotte Mosley, queen of editors, I have done a few book signings lately in aid of The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters.

A cheerful occasion was the lunch given by the publisher Fourth Estate at the Swan Inn, Swinbrook. The pub, decorated with family photographs, was reborn last November when Archie Orr-Ewing became landlord and its reputation has blossomed ever since. Eighteen important people in the book and magazine world came and I felt very proud of the Swan, its staff and Swinbrook itself. After 71 years it is still home to me; the same apple tree stands outside my old bedroom window in the Mill Cottage, which adjoins the Swan, and from where I was married in 1941. The dear old Windrush got overexcited in July and poured through the pub leaving a tidemark to say that it is called the Swan with reason.

The tallest box tree I know is by the entrance to the pub. Up the road is the hauntingly beautiful St Mary’s church. Go and see the Fettiplace monuments — 16th- and 17th-century stone men of a family long died out, lying on their sides propped up on their stone elbows. They are of extraordinary quality. The flagged floor and the pews were given by my father after a 500-1 win on the Grand National. He wanted to put up a plaque to say so but the Bishop wouldn’t allow it.

As children we licked the pews during the long hour of matins and they taste the same today. There is a memorial to my only brother Tom, who died of wounds in Burma in 1945. My parents and my sisters Nancy, Pam, Diana and Unity are buried there among the wool merchants’ tombs of long ago, some topped by rolled-up fleeces carved in stone.

Back to London and another book signing. So far the messages to be written have been pretty ordinary. As yet, we have not had the one a famous author of my acquaintance told me about. A man formed up and asked nervously, ‘Could you put “For Marlene — sorry about last night”?’

Philip Hensher reviews The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters on page 56.

Previous page 1 | 2 | 3

More articles from: Deborah Devonshire | this section

Print this article | Email to a friend | Permalink | Comment

Post this entry to: del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

Diary

Anne Robinson

The daughter and I spent the last few days before the American election in Arizona.

Politics

Fraser Nelson

Fraser Nelson reviews the week in politics

The Spectator's Notes

Charles Moore

‘A money-financed tax cut is essentially equivalent to Milton Friedman’s famous “helicopter drop” of money.’ So said Ben Bernanke, now the chairman of the Fed, in a speech about how to ward off the ‘extremely small’ chance of deflation, which he delivered in 2002.

Diary of a Notting Hill Nobody

Tamzin Lightwater

Tamzin Lightwater's unique take on the week

Letters

Spectator readers respond to recent articles

And Another Thing

Paul Johnson

Books do furnish a room; overfurnish it too

Don’t confuse conversation with dialogue or quips

Catherine Blyth

Catherine Blyth says that conversation is an art: its essence is the acrobatic business of reading and changing minds — talking with people, not at them

Low life

Jeremy Clarke

Private view

Diary

Penny Smith

I was without my dance partner last week.

State education has outlawed difficulty

Harry Mount

But private schools, private tutors and bestselling books are filling the vacuum, says Harry Mount. Larkin was right: there is a hunger in us all ‘to be more serious’