One year shy of her 90th birthday, The Dowager Duchess of Devonshire is a formidable lady who has experienced more than her share of scandal and dark times.
Deborah, known as Debo, is the last of the Mitford sisters, whose colourful and tragic family history caused controversy in the 1930s and 1940s.
But it's the state of modern society, which she brands 'sloppy and sentimental', that most concerns her in her dotage.
Ms Mitford laments the demise of the stiff upper lip, slamming the new kiss-and-tell generation for dwelling on their problems.
In an interview, she said: 'I think we made little of sorrow. we weren't sloppy-sentimental. It wasn't the thing to bellyache.
'Money and illness and sex were not talked about in those days and they are the only things people talk about these days, aren't they?'
The Dowager Duchess, who is set to publish autobiography Wait For Me In September, also claims modern culture is too reliant on pills and self-help.
The Dowager Duchess told Tatler: 'Grief - it is part of life.
'The disaster of someone dying was talked about for a bit and the person was mourned, you didn't go on about it and take pills and have to be counselled.
'Self pity and self esteem, which are now the key things in schools, were not allowed.'

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