Laura Thompson Interviewed by Lydia Slater

Writer Laura Thompson talks about the life of the novelist and biographer Nancy Mitford while an actress Amy Enticknap will read a recently discovered short story written by Mitford for Harper’s Bazaar.

Thompson is author of Life in a Cold Climate, a biography of Nancy Mitford, and of The Six: The Lives of the Mitford Sisters. The beautiful and highly individual Mitfords fascinated the public of 1930s Britain with their eccentric and often controversial behaviour. Nancy is known for her novels about upper class life in England and France and for her popular historical biographies. Thompson offers a portrait of a contradictory and courageous woman.

The Mitford short story, The Refuge, was published in Harper’s Bazaar in 1931 and was republished for the first time, again in the magazine, in 2015. It is a comic tale that draws out the absurdities of class, marriage and politics.

Thompson won the Somerset Maugham Award for her first book, The Dogs: A Personal History of Greyhound Racing. She is also author of Agatha Christie: An English Mystery, the first major biography of Christie for more than 20 years, and of A Different Class of Murder: The Story of Lord Lucan, and is a contributor to Harper’s Bazaar. Here she talks to deputy editor of Harper’s Bazaar and Town & Country magazines Lydia Slater.
       
This event is one of a series devoted to writers past and present associated with Harper’s Bazaar to mark the 150th anniversary of the magazine.

This event lasts 1 hour 15 minutes.

Biography & Memoir