Deborah Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire

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Deborah Vivien Cavendish, Dowager Duchess of Devonshire DCVO (born March 31, 1920), née the Hon. Deborah Freeman-Mitford and known to her family as "Debo", is the youngest and last surviving of the six noted Mitford sisters whose political affiliations and marriages were a prominent feature of English culture in the 1930s and 1940s.

Mitford married Lord Andrew Cavendish, younger son of the 10th Duke of Devonshire, in 1941. She was then known as Lady Andrew Cavendish. When Cavendish's older brother, William, Marquess of Hartington, was killed in combat in 1944, Cavendish became heir to the dukedom, and Deborah became the Marchioness of Hartington. When the 10th Duke died in 1950, Hartington became the 11th Duke of Devonshire and Deborah the Duchess of Devonshire.

The Duchess has been the main public face of Chatsworth for many decades, and has remained so in her widowhood, now in partnership primarily with her grandson, William Cavendish, Earl of Burlington, who seems to play a more public role than his father, the 12th Duke. She has written several books about Chatsworth, and has played a key role in the restoration of the house, the enhancement of the garden and the development of commercial activities such as Chatsworth Farm Shop (which is on a quite different scale from most farm shops as it employs a hundred people); Chatsworth's other retail and catering operations; and assorted offshoots such as Chatsworth Food, which sells luxury foodstuffs which carry her signature and Chatsworth Design which sells image rights to items and designs from the Chatsworth collections. Recognising the commercial imperatives of running a stately home, she takes a very active role and has been known to run the ticket office for Chatsworth House herself. She also supervised the development of the Cavendish Hotel at Baslow near Chatsworth and the Devonshire Arms Hotel at Bolton Abbey.

In 1999 she was appointed a Dame Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (DCVO) by Queen Elizabeth II, for her service to the Royal Collection Trust. She became the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire in 2004 when her son inherited the dukedom upon the death of her husband.

In an interview with the Daily Telegraph, published in September 2007, she recounted having tea with Adolf Hitler during a visit to Munich in June 1937, when she was visiting Germany with her mother and her sister Unity, the latter being the only one of the three who spoke German and, therefore, the one who carried on the entire conversation with Hitler. Shortly before ending the interview, she was asked by John Preston, the Telegraph journalist who conducted it, to choose who would she have preferred to have tea with, her idol, American singer Elvis Presley, or Hitler and, after looking at him with astonishment, she answered: "Well Elvis of course! What an extraordinary question".

She has three children, the 12th Duke, Lady Sophia Topley, and Lady Emma Cavendish. She is grandmother of the fashion model Stella Tennant.