“When asked by President Kennedy what she does all day, she admits she is ‘stumped’. A disarmingly simple soul – ‘I now prefer horse shows to lovers & I’ve never liked drink’ – the Duchess is at her best on varieties of gooseberry and rare breeds of cattle.”

(Kate McLoughlin, review of In Tearing Haste: Letters between Deborah Devonshire and Patrick Leigh Fermor, ed. Charlotte Mosley, p. 26 of the 28 November 2008 edition of the Times Literary Supplement.)