I have just completed a most enjoyable reading of Wait for me! , a memoir by Deborah Cavendish, the dowager Duchess of Devonshire. It is an interesting insight into the world of the generation born just after the first world war. A world of titles, new freedoms, and the world changed by the second world war.

The youngest of the infamous Mitford sisters, she was a close friend of the Kennedy family during their years in England, and afterwards. I suspect that there is more left unsaid, than is actually written. The Duchess is careful to not offend, and the few times she is critical it is laughed away. She touches briefly, almost as an afterthought, on her husband’s problems with alcohol, and one senses that, like so many British “upper crust” marriages, that they may have spent more time apart than together, but she gives little more of her own feelings away. No doubt the family tradition must be maintained.

The first half of the book is perhaps the most interesting – the time that her sisters loomed larger in her life, and there was a chapter or two that I skimmed through very quickly, not being one to advocate hunting, or having an interest in horses, but I have to say, that I really did find this a lovely read. In fact, I read it in two long sessions into the early hours of the morning.

I often judge the worth of a book by my eagerness to share it. I have two people on my list that I think would enjoy this book, so on my rating system it is a book  that will reward you for its reading.

 She must be one of the few people to have met both Adolf Hitler and John Kennedy, has been a familiar of the Queen for her entire reign, and was related by marriage to Harold Macmillan and used to go shooting with him. “When he became prime minister [in 1957, having previously been chancellor],” she tells me apropos of nothing in particular, “he told me it was wonderful because at last he had time to read.” She laughs. Her sense of humour and recognition of the absurdities of life are apparent throughout both her book and our conversation, bearing out her friend Alan Bennett’s remark: “Deborah Devonshire is not someone to whom one can say, ‘Joking apart . . .’ Joking never is apart: with her it’s of the essence, even at the most serious and indeed saddest moments.”

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