Patrick Leigh Fermor’s first sight of Deborah Mitford left a lasting impression. She didn’t notice him. It was at a ball in 1940, when he was a 25-year-old officer in the Intelligence Corps and she the 20-year-old fiancée of Andrew Cavendish, just commissioned into the Coldstream Guards. She had eyes only for her husband-to-be.

They met again as acquaintances at parties in London in the early Fifties, but their friendship truly blossomed in 1956 when Paddy took up a long-standing invitation to stay with Andrew and Debo – by now the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire – at Lismore, their magnificent neo-Gothic castle overlooking the Blackwater Valley in County Waterford, Ireland. This fairy-tale setting with its rich historical associations cast a spell over Paddy’s romantic spirit. He also fell for Debo. It was not an exclusive love – he was devoted to Joan Eyres Monsell, the woman who was to become his wife – but a deep, platonic attraction between two people who shared youthful high spirits, warmth, generosity and an enjoyment of life.

Debo was the youngest of the six beautiful Mitford sisters, whose exploits and extreme political opinions made them household names; she was also the most well-adjusted. The family’s rather isolated upbringing in the Oxfordshire countryside, immortalised in Nancy Mitford’s novels, suited Debo, and she considered her childhood to have been happy. From her mother, Lady Redesdale, who after her own mother’s death had taken over the running of her father’s household at the age of 14, Debo inherited an excellent head for business and a natural talent for organising, qualities that proved useful when, in 1950, Andrew inherited the dukedom and the vast Devonshire estates. In 1959, he and Debo moved back into Chatsworth, the family’s magnificent house in the Peak District of Derbyshire. Andrew paid off the death duties that were owing after his father’s death, amounting to some 80 per cent of the estate, and Debo restored the house and reopened it to the public. She started shops, a restaurant, a children’s playground and a farmyard, transforming a debt-ridden inheritance into a thriving enterprise.

Paddy’s reputation rested on an impressive war record and two books: The Traveller’s Tree and The Violins of Saint-Jacques. He had spent most of the war in Crete where, after the Allied retreat from the island in 1941, he was among a small number of British agents who stayed to help organise resistance to the Nazi occupation. In 1944, he led the successful abduction of Major-General Heinrich Kreipe, the German commander in Crete, a daring operation that won him the DSO. After the war, wanderlust took Paddy to the Caribbean, Central America, France, Spain, Italy and, most often, to Greece where he and Joan decided to settle in 1964.

Times Archive, 1944: Obituary: Major Lord Hartington

Leading the infantry forward, ahead of the tanks, carrying his cap and saying rather languidly, "Come on, you fellows, buck up!" death came to him instantly

Related Links

• Love Letters of Great Men

• Darling Debo ... love, Paddy

Paddy and Debo began to correspond in 1954, not very regularly at first – there would be a volley of exchanges, then silence for months – but when something caught their interest and they knew the other would be amused, they sent off a letter. Both were natural writers and storytellers and perfect foils for each other. They are acutely observant and clear-sighted about human failings, but their lack of cynicism and gift for looking on the bright side bear out the maxim that the world tends to treat you as you find it.

LETTERS
1954–2007

21 March 1954
Fitzroy House, Fitzroy Square, London W1
Dear Paddy Leigh Fermor,
I’m beginning like that chiefly because Nancy¹ says one mustn’t, but as she says I’m mental age of 9 it doesn’t signify how one begins. I’m ever so excited about you coming to Ireland. Do really come & don’t just say you are…
Best love
Debo

1 Nancy Mitford, DD’s eldest sister.

17 August 1957
Château de St Firmin, Vineuil, Oise
Darling Debo,
I say what an adventure with Evelyn Waugh!¹ I can see those pale eyes burning. He has the most peculiar expression of mouth, eye-socket and nostril, as though they were all recoiling from his own aroma, which would be a blend of tweed, claret, cigar smoke and incense. Freud² too, eh? I suppose it’s alright. H’m…
I must go and borrow the gardener’s bike, and spin through the rain to the post.
So lots of love, darling Debo, and polar bear hugs from
Paddy

1 The novelist, a demanding guest, announced that he had found an unemptied chamber pot in his bedside table when staying at Edensor with DD. 2 Lucian Freud, who painted six members of the Devonshire family.

Wednesday [1957]
Hôtels St James & d’Albany, 202 & 212 rue de Rivoli, Paris 1er
My darling Debo,
I do feel glum and downcast at your not coming to Paris! I somehow felt sure you would, and could already see us toddling about the streets arm-in-arm, two jolly bachelors, rolling from one lovely meal to another and dancing till daybreak and then stoking up on soupe à l’oignon in the Halles and then, after a suitable pause, beginning all over again. It’s lunatic to be so sad about it.
I wish you didn’t love everyone else more than me – it wouldn’t matter if I didn’t rather love you, as I suppose I do, otherwise I wouldn’t feel so selfish and possessive. The thing is, no one else will quite do, it’s too idiotic. But I do adore you. I mustn’t go on grumbling and groaning like this…
I’m having lunch today with Françoise Sagan, the rather pretty mop-headed near-teenage prodigy who wrote Bonjour Tristesse. I wonder what that will be like. Pretty awful, probably.
Nothing more for the moment, darling Debo, except love and hugs and fond and loving thoughts by the bushel, from
Paddy

31 August 1958
Estate Office, Chatsworth, Bakewell
Darling Paddy,
I did love your description of shooting. It was nearly all right but slipped up over one or two things, like a Hollywood film about England, so I am afraid it’s your American blood lately infused by Huston & Zanuck¹ which has put you wrong…
I talked secrets one day with the PM. Most jolly & educational. He has become much more human all of a sudden and talks about things like Adultery quite nicely.
Much love to Joan & you write & tell all.
Debo

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