My first and greatest debt is of course to Diana Mosley herself, for the many hours of interviews she gave me and for permission to reproduce photographs from her private albums, and extracts from her letters, diaries and writings, as well as for her generous hospitality. For talking to me so freely and for giving me permission to quote relevant material, I am grateful to Lady Mosley’s immediate family: her sisters the Duchess of Devonshire, the Hon. Mrs Pamela Jackson and the Hon. Mrs Robert Treuhaft; her sons Lord Moyne, the Hon. Desmond Guinness and Alexander Mosley and her daughter-in-law Charlotte Mosley; and her stepchildren Lord Ravensdale (Nicholas Mosley), Mrs Forbes-Adam and Michael Mosley.
I owe much to Jane Lady Abdy, Erica Betts, Michael Bloch, Simon Blow, Lady Butler, Shirley Conran, Elsie Corrigan, Quentin Crewe, June Ducas, Lord Gladwyn, Derek Hill, Louise Irvine, Joy and Richard Law, the Rt. Hon. Sir Frederick Lawton, Walter Lees, James Lees-Milne, Patrick Leigh Fermor, Lord Longford, Lady Longford, Lady Cecilia McKenna, Lady Alexandra Metcalfe, David Metcalfe, Lord Monckton of Brenchley, Frances Partridge, Lord Skidelsky, Hugo Vickers and John Warburton for their recollections and insights.
I am also most grateful to the Duchess of Devonshire for allowing me to reproduce photographs from her private albums and to quote writings and letters; to Rosaleen Mulji for permission to quote the letters of her father Bryan Guinness and extracts from his books and poetry; to Winston Churchill for permission to quote the letters of his father Randolph Churchill; to Lord Moyne and Desmond Guinness for allowing me to quote from letters and writings; to Nicholas Mosley for allowing me to quote from writings and letters, and for his kind permission to quote from his parents’ letters and from his aunt Irene Ravensdale’s diary, and for reading the chapters concerned with his biography of his father; to Francis Sitwell for permission to quote from his mother’s diaries; to Francis Beckett for permission to quote from his father’s unpublished manuscript; to Auberon Waugh for permission to quote extracts from his father’s diary and letters; to Mr Frank Cakebread for letting me see his History and Description of Savehay Farm; to the Beineke Library at Yale for the letters of James Lees-Milne; and to Steve Torrington and the staff of the Daily Mail library for their help with archival material.
Quotations from Carrington: Letters and extracts from her diaries: chosen with an introduction by David Garnett, published by Jonathan Cape are reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Ltd. Quotations from John Betjeman Letters: edited by Candida Lycett Green are reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Ltd.