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“... My great new friend is Noël Coward’, Nancy Mitford confided to a correspondent in 1949. ‘Bliss. He shakes like a jelly at one’s jokes, I adore that.’ It was laughs Nancy Mitford wanted, much more than grandeur. She longs to make people laugh, and sometimes, almost in the manner of a nervous stand-up comedienne, interrupts her letters to make sure that the audience is suitably convulsed ...”

“... left with girls in pearls living borderline tragic lives, or with the po-faced, lumpen Unity Mitford – galumph, galumph – who, unlike her five sisters (in descending order: Nancy, Pam, Diana, Unity, Decca, Debo; there was also a brother, Tom), had little talent for levity. So the jokes are crucial. One occasionally gets the impression, from Mary ...”

“... supporters were a group of ageing New York radicals led by Constancia Romilly, the daughter of Jessica Mitford and the ex-wife of the civil rights leader James Forman, and Dorothy Zellner, a veteran of the Student Non-violent Co-ordinating Committee. Friends from the civil rights era, and both red-diaper babies, Romilly and Zellner met Juliano in 2006 ...”