Asthall Manor Park. The youngest of the Mitford sisters Deborah, later Duchess of Devonshire, was born at Asthall in 1920. Her sister Diana had an appendectomy on the spare-bedroom table. The Mitfords were great socialites, and Asthall hosted frequent hunting and shooting weekend parties, regular guests included Clementine Churchill, Frederick Lindemann and Walter Sickert. Nancy Mitford's fictional Alconleigh in "The Pursuit of Love" is based largely on Asthall, and family life there is described in Jessica Mitford's autobiographical "Hons and Rebels". Redesdale had never planned to make Asthall Manor a permanent home, and in 1926 the family moved into nearby Swinbrook House
They Were Sisters from the immediate aftermath of World War I through to the late 1930s. The screenplay was developed by Pertwee from a popular novel of the same name by Dorothy Whipple, published in 1943. "They Were Sisters" features the spouses of both Mason and Calvert; Pamela Mason (billed under her maiden name Pamela Kellino, and playing Mason's daughter despite being only seven years younger) and Peter Murray-Hill. Mason later admitted that he acted most of his bullying, sadistic role with effectively an ongoing hangover as a means of dealing with the frustration he felt from his role and the British film