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Mitford Family
The Mitford family is an aristocratic British family who became particularly well known in the 1930s for the six Mitford sisters, the daughters of David Freeman-Mitford, 2nd Baron Redesdale, and his wife, Sydney Bowles. They were celebrated and sometimes scandalous figures. One journalist described them as "Diana Mosley, Diana the Fascist, Jessica Mitford, Jessica the Communist, Unity Mitford, Unity the Hitler-lover; Nancy Mitford, Nancy the Novelist; Deborah Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire, Deborah the Duchess and Pamela Mitford, Pamela the unobtrusive poultry connoisseur". Background The family traces its origins in Northumberland back to the time of the Norman Conquest. England in the Middle Ages, In the Middle Ages they had been border reivers based in Redesdale. The main line had its family seat first at Mitford Castle, then Mitford Old Manor House, prior to building Mitford Hall in 1828. All three are near Mitford, Northumberland. Several heads of the family served as H ...
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The Mitford Family In 1928
''The'' is a grammatical Article (grammar), article in English language, English, denoting nouns that are already or about to be mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the Most common words in English, most frequently used word in the English language; studies and analyses of texts have found it to account for seven percent of all printed English-language words. It is derived from gendered articles in Old English which combined in Middle English and now has a single form used with nouns of any gender. The word can be used with both singular and plural nouns, and with a noun that starts with any letter. This is different from many other languages, which have different forms of the definite article for different genders or numbers. Pronunciation In most dialects, "the" is pronounced as (with the voiced dental fricative followed by a schwa) when followed by a con ...
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Mitford Castle
Mitford Castle is an English castle dating from the end of the 11th century and located in the village of Mitford, Northumberland, to the west of Morpeth. It is a Scheduled Ancient Monument and a Grade I listed building, enlisted on 20 October 1969. The castle is also officially on the Buildings at Risk Register. The Norman motte and bailey castle stands on a small prominence, a somewhat elliptical mound, above the River Wansbeck. The selected building site allowed for the natural hill to be scarped and ditched, producing the motte. Mitford Castle was the first of three seats for the main line of the Mitford family constructed on manor lands. Following the destruction of Mitford Castle, Mitford Old Manor House (nearby and to the northwest) was used from the 16th century until the construction of Mitford Hall in 1828. Mitford Hall stands in an park to the west of the castle ruins. History There were few if any stone castles in England prior to the 1066 Norman Conquest. A ...
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The Pursuit Of Love
''The Pursuit of Love'' is a novel by Nancy Mitford, first published in 1945. It is the first in a trilogy about an upper-class English family in the interwar period focusing on the romantic life of Linda Radlett, as narrated by her cousin, Fanny Logan. Although a comedy, the story has tragic overtones. The book was an immediate best-seller and sold 200,000 copies within a year of publication. Mitford wrote two sequels to the novel, '' Love in a Cold Climate'' (1949) and '' Don't Tell Alfred'' (1960). Her penultimate novel, '' The Blessing'' (1951), also makes references to ''The Pursuit of Love'' and characters from ''The Blessing'' later appear in ''Don't Tell Alfred''. Plot summary The narrator is Fanny, whose mother (called the "Bolter" for her habit of serial monogamy) and father have left her to be brought up by her aunt Emily and the valetudinarian Davey, whom Emily marries early in the novel. Fanny also spends holidays with her uncle, Matthew Radlett, her aunt, Sadie ...
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Gaston Palewski
Gaston Palewski (20 March 1901 – 3 September 1984), a French politician, was a close associate of Charles de Gaulle during and after World War II. He is also remembered as the lover of the English novelist Nancy Mitford, and appears in a fictionalised form in two of her novels. Biography Palewski was born in Paris into a Jewish family, the son of industrialist Maurice Serge Moïse Herch Palewski (1867 in Kobryń, Belarus, Russian Empire – 1938) and his wife Rose (''née'' Diamant-Berger; 1869 in Buzău, Romania – 1954). Gaston Palewski was educated at the Sorbonne, at the École Libre des Sciences Politiques and at Oxford University—he spoke excellent English and was a convinced Anglophile. Using family connections, he obtained a post with Marshal Hubert Lyautey, the French Resident-General in Morocco. In 1928 he became principal private secretary to Paul Reynaud, a leading politician who was then Minister for Finances and who became Prime Minister of France in Marc ...
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Asthall Manor
Asthall Manor is a gabled Jacobean Cotswold manor house in Asthall, Oxfordshire. It was built in about 1620 and altered and enlarged in about 1916. The house is Grade II listed on the National Heritage List for England. Early in the 20th century, the house was the childhood home of the Mitford sisters. History Asthall Manor is a vernacular two-storey house with attics, built of local Cotswold limestone on an irregular H-plan with mullioned and mullioned- transomed windows and a stone-slated roof typical of the area. There are records of a house on the site since 1272 when Richard, 1st Earl of Cornwall, owned a house on the site worth 12d. In 1304 the curia, garden and fish pond were valued at 10 shillings. The core of the current building at Asthall was built in 1620 for Sir William Jones on the site of the mediaeval hall. In 1688 the estate was sold to Sir Edmund Fettiplace; it stayed in branches of the same family for the next 130 years when it was sold to John Fr ...
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Batsford Park
Batsford Arboretum is a arboretum and botanical garden near Batsford in Gloucestershire, England, about 1½ miles north-west of Moreton-in-Marsh, at . It is owned and run by the Batsford Foundation, a registered charity, and is open to the public daily throughout most of the year. The arboretum sits on the Cotswold scarp and contains around 2,900 trees, with a large collection of Japanese maples, magnolias and pines. History The estate of Batsford Park was inherited from the 1st Earl of Redesdale in May 1886 by the diplomat and writer A. B. Mitford, who was later created, in 1902, Baron Redesdale (by the second creation). He had travelled widely in Asia and developed the garden as a "wild" landscape with natural plantings inspired by Chinese and Japanese practice. Lord Redesdale died in August 1916 and the property was inherited by his son, David Freeman-Mitford, 2nd Baron Redesdale. David was the father of the famous Mitford sisters. They lived at Batsford during Worl ...
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Baron Redesdale
Baron Redesdale, of Redesdale in the County of Northumberland, is a title that has been created twice in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was firstly created in 1802 for the lawyer and politician Sir John Mitford (later Freeman-Mitford). The title was created anew in 1902 for the former's cousin thrice removed Bertram Freeman-Mitford. History The Mitford family is an aristocratic English family, with origins in medieval Northumberland where they held Mitford Castle. Sir John Mitford was Speaker of the House of Commons between 1801 and 1802 and Lord Chancellor of Ireland between 1802 and 1806. His only son, the second Baron, served as Chairman of Committees in the House of Lords from 1851 to 1886. In 1877, he was created Earl of Redesdale, in the County of Northumberland, in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. Lord Redesdale never married, and on his death in 1886 both titles became extinct. The Earl bequeathed his substantial estates to his first cousin twice remo ...
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British Peerage
A Peerage is a form of The Crown, crown distinction, with Peerages in the United Kingdom comprising both hereditary title, hereditary and life peer, lifetime titled appointments of various Imperial, royal and noble ranks, ranks, which form both a constituent part of the House of Lords, legislative process and the British honours system within the framework of the Constitution of the United Kingdom. The peerage forms the highest rung of what is termed the "British nobility". The term ''peerage'' can be used both collectively to refer to this British nobility, entire body of titled nobility (or a subdivision thereof), and individually to refer to a specific title (modern English language-style using an initial capital in the latter case but not the former). British peerage title holders are termed peers of the Realm. "Lord" is used as a generic term to denote members of the peerage, however individuals who use the appellation ''Lord'' or ''Lady'' are not always necessarily pee ...
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William Mitford
William Mitford (10 February 1744 – 10 February 1827) was an English historian, landowner, and politician. His best known work is ''The History of Greece'', published in ten volumes between 1784 and 1810. Early years William Mitford was born in London on 10 February 1744, into a rural Landed gentry, gentry family. The Mitfords were of Anglo-Saxons, Anglo-Saxon origin in Northumberland; the Doomsday Book states that Mitford Castle belonged to Sir John Mitford in 1066, but by 1086 belonged to William Bertram, a Norman knight married to Sibylla, the only daughter and heir of the previous owner. A hundred years later, the surname appears as Bertram of Mitford Castle as the main branch; but by the 17th century Bertram disappeared as a surname within the family. The Mitfords of Exbury, to which the author belongs, were a branch of the Northumberland family, who by the 18th century were engaged in trade and independent professions. First-born son of a wealthy London lawyer who amas ...
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Hampshire, England
Hampshire (, ; abbreviated to Hants.) is a ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Berkshire to the north, Surrey and West Sussex to the east, the Isle of Wight across the Solent to the south, Dorset to the west, and Wiltshire to the north-west. Southampton is the largest settlement, while Winchester is the county town. Other significant settlements within the county include Portsmouth, Basingstoke, Andover, Gosport, Fareham and Aldershot. The county has an area of and a population of 1,844,245, making it the 5th-most populous in England. The South Hampshire built-up area in the south-east of the county has a population of 855,569 and contains the cities of Southampton (269,781) and Portsmouth (208,100). In the north-east, the Farnborough/Aldershot conurbation extends into Berkshire and Surrey and has a population of 252,937. The next-largest settlements are Basingstoke (113,776), Andover (50,887), and Winchester (45,184). The centre and south-west of ...
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Exbury House
Exbury House is an English country house in Exbury and Lepe, Hampshire, situated on the edge of the New Forest. It is a Grade II* listed building with associated Grade II* listed parkland and gardens. The house consists of an 18th-century core which was redesigned and refaced in 1927. Constructed of brick and ashlar with a slate roof, it has a rectangular floor plan (with one corner sliced off), three storeys and a parapet around the roof. The long side garden frontage has nine bays and a colonnaded entrance. The main entrance front on the sliced-off corner has five bays. The gardens (see Exbury Gardens) were laid out by Lionel de Rothschild between 1919 and 1939 and contain specialist collections of rhododendrons and other species. Whilst the gardens are open to the public, the house is not. History Exbury Manor dates from the 13th century. It belonged to the Berkeley family in the 15th century and the Compton family of Compton Wynyates in Warwickshire in the 16th. In 1708 ...
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High Sheriff Of Northumberland
This is a list of the high sheriffs of the English county of Northumberland. The high sheriff is the oldest secular office under the Crown. Formerly the High Sheriff was the principal law enforcement officer in the county but over the centuries most of the responsibilities associated with the post have been transferred elsewhere or are now defunct, so that its functions are now largely ceremonial. The High Sheriff changes every March. 11th century * 1076–1080 Gilebert * 1085–1095 Arkell Morel, supposed slayer of Malcolm Canmore, King of Scots at the Battle of Alnwick. 12th century * 1107–1118 Joint Ligulf and Aluric * 1119–1132 Odard * 1133–1150 Adam son of Odard * 1154 Odard * 1155–1170 William de Vesci, Lord of Alnwick * 1171–1184 Roger de Stuteville * 1185–1188 Roger de Glanville * 1189 William de Stuteville * 1190 William de Stuteville and Reginald Basset * 1191–1193 William de Stuteville * 1194–1199 Hugh Bardulf 13th century 14th century 15th ...
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