Nancy Mitford was a member of British high society and used the setting as inspiration for her novels. She was considered one of the "Bright Young Things" in the London social scene during the interwar years. The Honorable. 
 

"She was happily married, she said, to a handsome man called Hubert Lace, who was an old darling, but fearfully jealous, selfish, greedy, and mean. These unpleaseant words were not named, but served up with a frothing sauce of sugary chatter. As the old darling was also slightly half-witted he could naturally have no sympathy for Anne-Marie's artistic leanings, and she was therefore obliged to wrap herself up in her garden, her children, and the consolations of the intellect. Noel assumed from the fact that her name, as she told him, was Anne-Marie, from the slightly foriegn accent and curious idiom in which she spoke, and from her general appearance, that she was not altogether English. He was wrong, however."

– Nancy Mitford, Wigs on the Green