The anthology comprises four brief essays by Nancy Mitford, Alan S. C. Ross, "Strix" and Christopher Sykes, a letter by Evelyn Waugh, and a poem by John Betjeman.

[1] Although the subtitle rather dryly suggests it as an enquiry into the identifying characteristics of members of the English upper-class, it is really more of a debate, with each essayist entertaining and convincing.

[a] The book included essays from contributors like Nancy Mitford, Evelyn Waugh, and John Betjeman, who humorously dissected upper-class habits and language This collection of essays started with Nancy Mitford's article "The English Aristocracy", published in 1955 in the magazine Encounter in response to a serious academic article by the British linguist Alan S. C. Ross (below).

Deborah Cavendish, the Duchess of Devonshire, the youngest of the famously (and sometimes infamously) unconventional Mitford sisters, wrote a letter to Encounter[4] about the article saying: "... as the co-founder, with my sister Jessica,[5] of the Hons Club, I would like to point out that ... the word Hon meant Hen in Honnish... We were very fond of chickens and on the whole preferred their company to that of human beings ...".

[6] Noblesse Oblige was reviewed favorably by Time magazine in May 1956: In these days of penurious peers and vanishing stately homes, how can one tell whether an Englishman is a genuine member of the Upper Class?

Not since Humorist Stephen Potter launched the cult of gamesmanship had the nation been so obsessed as it was over the difference between U (Upper Class) and non-U.Two decades later, upon Mitford's death, the New York Times obituary had this to say about the book: Unabashedly snobbish and devastatingly witty, Miss Mitford achieved enormous success and popularity as one of Britain's most piercing observers of social manners...

Indeed, one of Miss Mitford's pet concerns entered the history of obscure literary debates when, in 1955, she published perhaps her most famous essay on upper-class and non-upper-class forms of speech.

The essay sparked such a controversy in Britain, with responses from many major literary figures, that Miss Mitford was compelled a year later to bring out a thin book, Noblesse Oblige, with her disquisition on the subject as its centerpiece.

Accused of being a snob, she quotes from Alan Ross of Birmingham University who points out that "it is solely by their language that the upper classes nowadays are distinguished since they are neither cleaner, richer, nor better-educated than anybody else".

The second article is a condensed and simplified version of Professor Ross’ "Linguistic Class-Indicators in Present-Day English",[10] which appeared in 1954 in the Finnish philological periodical Neuphilologische Mitteilungen.

[12] Widely regarded as a master of style of the 20th century, Waugh, who was a great friend of Nancy Mitford,[13] added his own thoughts to the class debate and points out that Nancy is a delightful trouble maker to write such a thing but also someone who only just managed to be upper class and now resides in another country, so — he asks — who is she really to even bring it all up?

Before pushing on to the less etymological aspects of her theme, he addresses how language evolves and changes naturally,[17] and U-slang, attributing to it a sense of parody.

Pursuing his argument he introduces Topivity — T-manners and T-customs[18] etc., meaning the likely social conventions of a remote future in which the peerage has survived by infiltrating the trade union movement on a large scale.

Abandoning "U", he ends the article with "T" stating that one big T-point remains constant: nobody wants a really poor peer: it is very un-T not to be rich.