Lie algebras with nilpotent length greater than that of each of their subalgebras

The main purpose of this paper is to study the finite-dimensional solvable Lie algebras described in its title, which we call {\em minimal non-${\mathcal N}$}. To facilitate this we investigate solvable Lie algebras of nilpotent length $k$, and of nilpotent length $\leq k$, and {\em extreme} Lie algebras, which have the property that their nilpotent length is equal to the number of conjugacy classes of maximal subalgebras. We characterise the minimal non-${\mathcal N}$ Lie algebras in which every nilpotent subalgebra is abelian, and those of solvability index $\leq 3$.