Nancy Mitford

John Moat

Heywood Hill

Nancy Mitford was a brilliant personality, a remarkable novelist and a legendary letter-writer. It is not widely known that she was also a bookseller. From 1942 to 1945 she worked in Heywood Hill's famous shop in Curzon Street, Mayfair, and effectively ran it when Heywood Hill was called up for war service. After the war she left to live in France, but she maintained an abiding interest in the shop, its stock, and the many and varied customers who themselves form a cavalcade of the literary stars of post-war Britain. Her letters to Heywood Hill 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, with news about their friends, and with aspects of literary and bookish life in London.

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