From Prime Ministers to Presidents, film stars and members of the Royal Family, the pair who began a 50-year correspondence after meeting, in 1954, have had front-row seats at moments of history.

Their letters, which at the last count amounted to about 600, talk one minute of the mundane and the next of sharing a weekend with the Queen Mother, but all give a rare glimpse into the realities of a well-connected life.

"There are some fabulous stories in there, some which I never tire of reading," says Charlotte Mosley, editor of In Tearing Haste: Letters Between Deborah Devonshire and Patrick Leigh Fermor. "There's a great honesty in what they write and such humour. One particular favourite is the time Debo went to stay at Sandringham and by accident upended an ink pot all over the carpet. Having tried desperately to mop it with her husband's sponge, she admits defeat, calls a maid and flees to hide her embarrassment.

"Or there's Paddy's account of how he got thrown out of Somerset Maugham's house for inadvertently making fun of the author's stutter and accidentally ripping a bedsheet, which caught in his suitcase, on the way out.

"The letters show a very human side to a world which is often seen as aloof. Debo, may be one of the Mitford sisters, but she has always treated everyone as an equal, and I think that definitely comes through in the letters."

The idea for the book, says Charlotte, who married Deborah's nephew and who previously edited the collection of letters between the sisters, came from the Dowager herself.

"I knew they had been in correspondence, but I had no idea of the number of letters," she says. "It was a real privilege, not only to be handed the task of turning the letters into the book, but to meet Paddy, who is just an absolute joy."

The previous collection Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters, became a bestseller, and it's not hard to see why. The Mitford sisters dominated 1930s' high society and their behaviour was far from conventional. Two of them, Unity and Diana, were Hitler apologists, and Diana caused further scandal when she married Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists.

While Deborah followed a more conventional path, her transformation, along with her late husband, Andrew, of Chatsworth House from a
debt-ridden money pit into one of the country's most visited stately homes, and their running of the Bolton Abbey estate,
is an epic story in its own right, and Patrick's life is no less colourful.

At 18, he wanted to go to Greece and without the money to fund the trip, decided to walk there. When the Second World War broke out, he spent 18 months disguised as a shepherd living in the Cretan hills before leading the successful abduction of a German commander. The operation provided the inspiration for the film, Ill Met By Moonlight, and after the war Paddy's writing career really took off.

"They are very different characters," says Charlotte. "Paddy is an erudite intellectual, who is incredibly well read and well travelled, whereas Debo, claims never to read. That may be a little disingenuous, but while Paddy is lyrical, she is more straight to the point.

"Their personalities shone through in the editing process. Debo was happy for her letters to go in unchanged, but Paddy is a perfectionist and if he saw a comma out of place, it was just too much for him to take. Despite their differences, what they share is an enthusiasm and curiosity for life which is infectious.

"When Debo was writing to her sisters, she often had to be conciliatory, she was the one trying to sort out problems, but here she shows a much more playful side.

"Neither of them seem to have aged. Apart from the odd complaint about their failing eyesight, the individuals who come across in the letters appear forever young."

While Charlotte did have to pare down the correspondence, she was careful not to act as a censor, and it's the pair's character assessments of the great and the good from which much of the humour comes.

In her inimitable style, Deborah describes Cherie Blair as "frightful", dismisses John Prescott as having "the appearance of a bare-knuckle fighter from the East End" and Harold Wilson is branded a "freak". One of those to emerge with their reputation intact is John Major, of whom she said, after meeting him in 1992, exuded "goodness, unheard of in a politician".

"I'm afraid I don't think about other people's feelings," laughs Charlotte. "It wasn't my job to censor the letters and it would have been very wrong to have removed these fantastic
one-liners.

"However, the whole process was tinged with a little sadness because I realised that in another 50 years time, collections of letters like these won't exist.

"We may communicate more than we ever have before, but I'm afraid the art of letter writing
is dead.

"The Mitford family have made so many headlines in their time. Clearly, they took very different paths, but to be in their company is like someone switching on the lights in the pitch black."



In Tearing Haste: Letters between Deborah Devonshire and Patrick Leigh Fermor, published by John Murray, priced £25, is available to order through the Yorkshire Post Bookshop on 0800 0153232 or online at www. yorkshirepostbookshop.co.uk. Postage and packing is £2.75.

A discussion and book-signing will take place at Chatsworth House, on September 1, at noon, where Deborah and Patrick will be joined by Charlotte and playwright Tom Stoppard. Tickets are priced £30 and include a donation to The London Library and entry to Chatsworth House and garden. To reserve your place, call 01246 565 363 or 01246 565 315.


IN THEIR OWN WORDS...


Patrick Leigh Fermor on...

...Ill Met By Moonlight, the film based on his heroics in Crete during the Second World War.

"There are scores of small things dead wrong, & Xan (writer and translator Xan Fielding) and I are having a death struggle to get them put right...The main trouble is that once a film script is written, the authors bow down and worship it as though it were a Holy writ. IT becomes the truth and anyone trying to change it...incurs the horror of heretics trying to tamper with the text of the Gospel.

(August 26, 1956)


...Errol Flynn on the set of The Roots of Heaven, for which Paddy wrote the screenplay

"He poses as the most tremendous bounder – glories in being a cad – but is intelligent, perceptive and, in a freak way, immensely likable. We are rather chums, to my bewilderment. Sex rules his life, and very indiscreet and criticisable and amusing he is about it."

(March 30, 1958)


Deborah Devonshire on...

John F Kennedy's funeral

"Oh it was strange, Americans aren't suited to tragedy. They like everything to be great. I was more or less alright in church till his friends came in & their crumpled miserable faces were too much & it was floods all the way after that....I do feel so sad about
J Kennedy, but really the fantastic luck was knowing him at all, such an extraordinary person, so funny, so touching, clever, brave & sort of good & such marvellous company."

(December 6, 1963)


...Being interviewed by Penelope Keith

"Spent two days filming with a wonder called Penelope Keith. Did you ever see her on the telly... she's exactly like she is...with an even more exaggerated voice than all Mitfords put together. The subject of her interview was v unexpected – Capability Brown....Anyway I spoke my mind about how he buggered up our garden and how thankful I was he hadn't stopped up the river to make a soggy old lake, so I hope it won't be too dull."

(August 11, 1983)


...The death of the Queen Mother

"We've been in London for Cake's (nickname for the Queen Mother) funeral. What a poke in the eye for the media that all those people queued night & day to see the lying in state...The funeral itself was one of those incredible performances which could only happen in this country... My poor friend's (Prince Charles) steely face made us all realise how much he loved her and relied on her."

(April 11, 2002)