Aunt Sadie Radlett Celia Imrie An enhanced portrait of Nancy Mitford's mother, Sydney, Lady Redesdale (1880-1963), Aunt Sadie is Linda and Jassy's kind, rather vague mother, who tries in vain to keep control at Alconleigh. One of Britain's best loved actresses, Celia Imrie drew inspiration from filming at Batsford Park, the Mitfords' home early in the 20th century and a model for Alconleigh. "I remember when I first saw a Van Gogh painting when I was in America, the thrill of actually realizing that Van Gogh's paintbrush touched that piece of canvas was so exciting. And the thought that Nancy Mitford would have walked on the same steps, into the same room that we we're filming in, it really does give you a little something extra. And the way that our designers had 'dressed' the place, it looked as though they have never left." Imrie also had to contend with people's ideas of who Aunt Sadie should be. "You know, it's the same with any famous book. If it's Alice in Wonderland, people have their own idea of what Alice should be like, and it's the same with Aunt Sadie. So you have just got to try and do your own version." With a wealth of theatrical, television, and film experience, Imrie has created performances cherished by the viewing public and hailed by critics. Her television work includes Gormenghast and Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. Her film credits include Frankenstein, In the Bleak Midwinter, The Borrowers, Star Wars: Episode 1, Hilary And Jackie, and Bridget Jones's Diary. Her stage work includes Rough Magic, The Last Waltz, A Month in the Country, and The School for Scandal. In Mitford's words: Aunt Sadie Radlett There is a photograph in existence of Aunt Sadie and her six children sitting round the tea-table at Alconleigh. The table is situated, as it was, is now, and ever shall be, in the hall in front of a huge open fire of logs..... Aunt Sadie's face, always beautiful, appears strangely round, her fair strangely fluffy, and her clothes strangely dowdy, but it is unmistakably she who sits there with Robin, in oceans of lace, lolling on her knee. She seems uncertain what to do with his head, and the presence of Nanny waiting to take him way is felt though not seen. The other children, between Louisa's eleven and Matt's two years, sit round the table in party dresses or frilly bibs, holding cups or mugs according to age, all of them gazing at the camera with large eyes opened wide by the flash, and all looking as if butter would not melt in their round pursed-up mouths. There they are, held like flies in the amber of the moment -- click goes the camera and on goes life; the minutes, the days, the years, the decades, taking them further and further from that happiness and promise of youth, from the hopes Aunt Sadie must have had for them, and from the dreams they dreamed for themselves. I often think there is nothing quite so poignantly sad as old family photographs. The Pursuit of Love, Chapter 1