Drawing on Mitford's highly autobiographical early novels - as well as the biographies and novels of her more mature French period, her journalism and the vast body of letters to her sisters, lovers and friends such as Evelyn Waugh and Cyril Connolly - Thompson has put together a portrait of a courageous and contradictory woman: a woman who expressed anti-feminist views while living a life of financial and emotional independence; a woman who appeared quintessentially English but who was only wholly able to be herself once she moved to France; a woman who believed implacably that the best response to life's pain was laughter. Approaching her subject with wit, perspicacity and huge affection, Laura Thompson, like Mitford, makes her serious points lightly. Eschewing cliches about the eccentricities of the Mitford clan (although nonetheless delving into the forces which politically polarised this family of 'contagiously and competitive' girls) Thompson analyses the contradictions and complexities at the heart of Nancy Mitford's life and work.