1910s
Her father was Sir Bache Cunard, an heir to the Cunard Line shipping businesses, interested in polo and fox hunting, and a baronet. Her mother was Maud Alice Burke an American heiress, who adopted the first name Emerald and became a leading London society hostess. Nancy had been brought up on the family estate at Nevill Holt, Leicestershire but when her parents separated in 1911 she moved to London with her mother. Her education was at various boarding schools, including time in France and Germany.
She had a short-lived marriage during World War I to Sydney Fairbairn, a cricketer, an army officer and wounded war veteran; it lasted less than two years before they separated. She was also at that time on the edge of the influential group The Coterie, associating in particular with Iris Tree.
She contributed to the Sitwell anthology Wheels, providing its title poem; it has been said that the venture was originally her project.
Cunard's lover Peter Broughton-Adderley was killed in action in France less than a month before Armistice Day, within the year she announced her engagement to Fairbairn. Many who knew her claimed that she never fully recovered from Adderley's loss.
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