Oswald Mosley And Diana Mitford: A Fascist ‘Romeo & Juliet’ Oswald Mosley And Diana Mitford: A Fascist ‘Romeo & Juliet’ By Palash Ghosh @Gooch700 On 10/24/12 AT 5:59 AM Hollywood will never make a film about them, but Sir Oswald Mosley and Diana Mitford formed one of the greatest romantic duos of the 20th century. The tale of Oswald and Diana's half-century-long love affair featured virtually everything that makes Hollywood salivate – wealth, aristocracy, beauty, charm, war, danger, glamour, betrayal, violence, tragedy, courage, imprisonment and, of course, forbidden love. But no epic novel or screenplay could possibly match the extraordinary lives of this blessed and doomed couple. Oswald Mosley is one of the most hated figures in modern British history (in fact, a poll by BBC a few years ago labeled him as the “worst Briton “of the 20th century). Likewise, Diana, who began her life with much promise, and privilege, will also remain a widely detested figure.

The Mosleys were Fascists and Nazi sympathizers, even imprisoned for their beliefs and largely discarded by the establishment that spawned them. Born to minor aristocracy, the supremely handsome, dashing and mustachioed Mosley fought bravely in World War I (seeing action during the Second Battle of Ypres) and ultimately gravitated toward post-war politics. Initially a member of the Conservative Party, he bristled against its restrictions, and switched over to Labour, before finally embracing the Fascists during the 1930s economic depression that battered the Western world. Despite devoting his early political career to alleviating the suffering of Britain's poor and unemployed, seeking to avoid another devastating war, and earning raves as a charismatic speaker, Mosley will forever be remembered for forming the British Union of Fascists (inspired by Benito Mussolini's Blackshirts in Italy) and for supporting Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in Germany. Mosley's personal life was also extremely colorful – he married Lady Cynthia "Cimmie" Curzon, the daughter of the famed former viceroy of India, in May 1920.

Their wedding (which Lord Curzon apparently disapproved of) was the social event of the year, attracting the cream of British aristocracy, including none other than King George V and Queen Mary. But Mosley was not the monogamous type – not only did he enjoy sexual dalliances with Cimmie's younger sister, Lady Alexandra Metcalfe, but even with his wife's stepmother, Grace Curzon. After Cimmie died unexpectedly of peritonitis in 1933, Mosley married the love of his life (the woman who was already living openly as his mistress), Diana Mitford. Diana, regarded by some admirers as the most beautiful woman of her era, was one of the celebrated Mitford sisters, later to be immortalized in various biographies and novels. Indeed, to be with Mosley, Diana left her first husband, Bryan Walter Guinness, heir to the famous Irish beer fortune, one of the wealthiest men in Europe, perhaps the world. As if to solidify their mutual attachment to Fascism, Mosley and Diana married secretly in 1936 at the Berlin residence of Josef Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister.

Der Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, attended the ceremony as an honored guest. By this point, Mosley had already mapped out a Fascist future for Britain, greatly impressed by the economic advancements he witnessed first-hand in Nazi Germany and Mussolini's Italy. “Mosley thought the Italians had developed a form of state that would point to the future and that events in Germany were leading where Britain would follow,” said Matthew Worley, professor of modern history at the University of Reading in the UK. “He did build a paramilitary force designed to win the streets, come democracy’s fall and the onset of class war. These were modeled on both the Blackshirts and the German [Sturmabteilung] SA.” With Diana's support and encouragement, Mosley devoted himself to the BUF, delivering speeches, conducting radio broadcasts and raising funds. At its peak, the anti-Communist, pro-protectionist BUF boasted some 50,000 members. While the BUF attracted some short-term support from “respectable” establishment entities like the Daily Mail newspaper and some Conservative politicians, the Blackshirts' repeated public brawls with Communists, and particularly Jews, across London alienated many.

Any hopes for the BUF rising to mainstream acceptance were permanently dashed in June 1934 at the Olympia in London, when a rally by Mosley deteriorated into a huge brawl that echoed the Nazi violence in Germany. Perhaps the most notorious incident of public fisticuffs involving the BUF erupted in October 1936, when a march led by Mosley in the heavily Jewish East End of London sparked a massive riot – an event that came to be known as the "Battle of Cable Street." “The Battle of Cable Street was a kind of turning point because as a result the government banned the wearing of uniforms by non-UK military groups, thereby [forcing] the BUF [to] parade in street clothes and look ridiculous -- a very clever step,” said William Rubinstein, an American-born historian and author who currently works at Aberystwyth University in Wales. “It was also famous because it was one of the few times in Europe in the 1930s when the extreme right openly ‘fought’ the left, and the left won.

It also showed the apparent power of a broadly-based anti-Fascist ‘popular front’ on the left.” In the next few years, as Britain hurtled itself inevitably into war against Germany, Mosley continued to organize marches while advocating for peace with the Nazis. By May 1940, eight months into the war, Mosley was imprisoned – Diana would soon join him in internment -- as grave security risks to the nation. Mosley, Diana and their son Max spent much of the war in Holloway Prison in north London or under house arrest. Bizarrely, they led a relatively normal existence while incarcerated – indeed, owing to their high-born status, they enjoyed such perks as servants, fine food and visitors. The public viewed them as traitors, though their social circle and family campaigned for their release, Worley noted. “Winston Churchill was reputedly pleased once they were placed under house arrest rather than held in prison,” he added. After the war, in the wake of the defeat of Nazism and Fascism in Europe, the Mosleys had no future in British politics, although Oswald continued to call for a "union movement" to unite all of Western Europe under one flag.

By 1951, the Mosleys relocated to Ireland, then later moved to France, where they would spend the rest of their lives. But in the late 1950s, a new phenomenon emerged in Britain that provided the far right with a new cause to attract renewed support. What began as a trickle in 1945 led to a significant increase of immigrants from the far-flung corners of the former British Empire, particularly from India, Pakistan and Jamaica. White Britons across the ideological spectrum grew alarmed at the sudden mushrooming of non-white communities in some of their large cities. In the wake of race riots in Notting Hill, North London, in 1958, Mosley decided to run in the general election for Kensington North the following year. He lost, but continued to campaign against further Commonwealth immigration, mostly in debates, speeches and television appearances. Mosley died of natural causes in December 1980 in Paris, at the age of 84, a largely despised figure in the United Kingdom.

Throughout all of Mosley's triumphs, failures and humiliations, Diana remained steadfastly loyal to her husband and his extreme right-wing ideology, speaking lovingly of him until her own death in Paris in 2003. Nonetheless, Mosley, even in his advancing years, continued to cheat on her. (Ellen Wilkinson, a Labour MP, once described Mosley as a “real-life Valentino.”) Among Diana's famous sisters, only Unity (a die-hard Nazi who shot herself when Britain declared war on Germany) shared her Fascist beliefs, while her other siblings generally could not abide Mosley. Indeed, for the rest of her life, Diana's relationship with her family grew strained, or nonexistent. While in Paris, she wrote articles, book reviews, translated French and German manuscripts into English, and published an autobiography in the late 1970s. Still, she never relinquished her attachment to Nazism nor to her cherished memories of Mosley. What is Oswald Mosley’s legacy to contemporary Britain? Rubinstein contends that Mosley is not a forgotten figure.

Despite his censure by the British government, Mosley remains a far-better remembered figure from the interwar years than even Prime Ministers like Andrew Bonar Law and Ramsay MacDonald. Moreover, Mosley’s principal cause of his later years – uncontrolled immigration – remains a dominant theme in UK politics in the early 21st century. Indeed, the BUF may be viewed as a kind of antecedent to the better-known anti-immigration parties of modern Britain, the National Front, which peaked in popularity in the 1970s until Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher co-opted their message; and the British National Party, which exists today. Rubinstein notes that, like the BUF, the NF and BNP have never enjoyed mainstream popularity. And by lacking a charismatic leader like Mosley, the BNP may be even less of a political force than the BUF was during its brief heyday in the 1930s. Indeed, the NF and BNP have been led by non-telegenic, uncharismatic leaders like Nick Griffin, Colin Jordan and Martin Webster, hardly the polished aristocrat that Mosley was. Mosley also differed from the later quasi-Fascists in another fundamental way.

“Mosley was centrally concerned with unifying the British Empire and making it an autocratic geo-political unit,” Rubinstein noted. “There is no Empire today, obviously, and the BNP, et al., detest the EU.” Worley noted that the Fascism of the NF and BNP more closely matches the even more overtly racist National Socialist ideas of Mosley’s rival Arnold Leese, who established the Imperial Fascist League in 1928 and was committed to a far more racial concept of Fascism than Mosley. It is also interesting to compare Mosley with Enoch Powell, the Conservative MP who became the establishment’s face of anti-immigration sentiment during the 1960s. Powell is perhaps most famous for the “Rivers of Blood” speech from April 1968, in which he warned that unrestricted immigration into Britain would spark massive civil unrest. Worley explains that Powell has a higher profile than Mosley because Powell’s notoriety is more recent and he expressed his warnings of racial conflict during a period when they had some resonance. “Second, [Powell] was a member of the Conservative Party and therefore very much part of the political mainstream.

By the time Mosley moved to Fascism and adopted anti-Semitism he was already an outcast. As a result, Powell’s comments could be contained within the existing political framework, they chimed with ongoing debate and concerns within sections of society at the time, and he was feted within parts of the media.” It remains unclear how deeply Mosley embraced the most objectionable aspects of Fascist and Nazi ideologies, namely the racial views underlying these philosophies. Worley indicated that Mosley first viewed Fascism as a more convenient way in which to enact radical economic policies to alleviate the economic crises of the 1920 and 1930s. “[Mosley also] thought Fascism a more unifying [form of] politics than Communism, which he saw as divisive (i.e., promoting class war) and prone to widescale disruption and bloodshed (as in Russia). The notion of a corporate state and an insulated trading bloc (first the British Empire and then Europe) formed the basis of his politics.” But once Mosley dove deeply into Fascism, there was no way for him to revert to the mainstream.

“The rise of Hitler and the power of Mussolini enthralled him and he swam in their wake,” Worley declared. “That said, much of his politics remained constant throughout his life, but the methods by which they should be enacted changed. Was he anti-Semitic and racist? Yes, he was. Did he condone political violence? Yes, he did. “ With respect to Mosley’s alleged anti-Semitism, Rubinstein points out some interesting details. In 1929-30, he notes, Mosley worked with Emanuel Shinwell, the British trade union official and Labour MP, who was Jewish. “They worked without incident and must have had many friends among wealthy and acculturated Jews, like anyone from his class and background in the UK,” Rubinstein said. Even more remarkable, during the early days of the BUF, Mosley’s personal bodyguard was none other than the Jewish boxer, Kid Lewis, born Gershon Mendeloff. “When Lewis learned that Mosley had become anti-Semitic, he beat him up,” Rubinstein remarked. Regardless, Mosley likely viewed himself as a potential “British Fuehrer,” but given the vast differences between Britain and Germany or Italy, it was simply not to be.

Yet Mosley, with the radiant Diana standing loyally by his side, remain a fascinating, if dark and troubling, slice of 20th century history that many people appear to have forgotten. Mosley had five children, the two most prominent being Nicholas (by his first wife, Cimmie) who became a novelist; and Max (by Diana), who rose to some notoriety as the president of the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile racing organization. Masterpiece Theatre | Love in a Cold Climate | Essays + Interviews | The Mitford Sisters The Mitford Sisters Raised in isolation on several Cotswold estates, the seven children of Lord and Lady Redesdale -- six daughters and a son -- were forced to depend on each other for ideas, companionship, and fun. They invented elaborate family jokes and games that included an elaborate network of nicknames and private languages. By the time Tom was at Eton and the girls ready for their London debuts, they had each developed their own highly individual, eccentric personalities.

Coming of age in the era of Evelyn Waugh's fabled "Bright Young Things," the Mitford children burned bright only to flame out in a series of unwise alliances, outspoken books, and poorly chosen political bedfellows. Nancy, The Author The eldest of the seven children of David Mitford and Sydney Bowles, Nancy was born in London in 1904. Because her father did not believe in formal education for girls, Nancy and her sisters were instructed at home by governesses. (One reason he gave was that by playing field hockey, a common school sport, they would develop thick calves.) Both Nancy and Jessica longed to go to school, and at age 16 Nancy got her wish, spending less than a year at nearby Hatherop Castle. By and large, school did not play a large part in her childhood. Books, however, did. By age six, Nancy was already reading Ivanhoe, and she went on to read voraciously throughout her teenage years. The strict house rules about books -- children were not allowed to read in bed or to read novels in the morning, and library books had to stay in the library -- made reading, especially the reading of novels, all the more attractive.

Nancy's own first novel, Highland Fling, was published in 1931, followed by Christmas Pudding the next year. But critics and the public took little notice of these frothy romps. She found success with her fifth novel, The Pursuit of Love (1945), and its sequel, Love in a Cold Climate (1949). Based like much of her fiction on her own experiences, their sentimental but satiric tone was irresistible to a nation fatigued by years of war, and the books became best-sellers. Known for her style and elegance, Nancy was a great social success, as were her sisters in their turn. As a young woman in London, she worked away at her fiction and penned articles for Vogue, The Lady, and Harper's. Released at last from the family fold, she took up residence with the author Evelyn Waugh and his wife and enjoyed a lively social life. Her first love was Hamish St. Clair Erskine, an aesthete who had been friends with her brother at Eton. When he threw her over, she quickly married Peter Rodd, son of an eminent diplomat, chiefly because he happened to be available.

Undone by his philandering and profligate spending habits, the match was never happy; they would divorce in 1958. With her husband posted overseas during the war, Nancy found work as an assistant at Heywood Hill bookshop in the Mayfair district of London, where she soon became a partner in the firm. Drawing on her work with Rodd in refugee camps during the Spanish Civil War, Nancy did her part in the war effort as an Air Raid Precautions (ARP) driver in London. By this time, Nancy had fallen in love with Gaston Palewski, a follower of General de Gaulle, who she included as Fabrice in The Pursuit of Love. Settling in Paris after the war, she moved from fiction to history, writing highly acclaimed biographies: Madame de Pompadour (1953), Voltaire in Love (1957), The Sun King (1966), and Frederick the Great (1970). She is remembered, however, as Britain's most piercing observer of social manners.

While her sheltered upbringing was the object of her scalding satire, she nonetheless continued to defend it until her death in Paris, of cancer, at the age of 69. Pamela, The "Woman" Sister number two, Pamela (1907-1994), was the least rebellious of the older girls. Of all the sisters, Pamela developed a particular love of the country and went on to become a poultry expert. According to Mitford biographer Mary S. Lovell, for Pam the country "... was not just a 'nice place to live,' she felt a positive affinity with farming and animals.... It was her undisguised enjoyment of domesticated pursuits such as cooking, which the others regarded as boring and 'womanly,' that led to her lifelong nickname in the family, Woman, sometimes shorted to Woo." Known as the "quiet sister," she nonetheless attracted her share of suitors, and in 1936 she fell for Derek Ainslie Jackson, the good-looking son of Sir Charles Jackson and a world-renowned physicist in his own right. After divorcing his first wife, he married her that December.

Pam and Derek would take in Diana's two boys when she and her second husband, Oswald Mosley, were jailed for treason. Tom, The Boy Tom (1909-1945), the only Mitford son, became a lawyer with a passion for music. As a youngster, he participated with the girls in schoolroom lessons at home, where he was taught Latin and math, subjects essential for his admission to boarding school and that were thought necessary for the girls. At the age of nine, he was sent to a preparatory school, which eventually lead to his enrollment at Eton. Although not often at home, Tom played an important role in the education of his sisters, as he brought them a glimpse of the wider world. After Eton, Tom went on to study German and music in Vienna. He loved Germany and everything about it. Although he was not known to be anti-Semitic, he was impressed by Hitler when he met him, as were both his parents when they visited Berlin. In the end, however, he fought for England in World War II and was killed in Burma in April 1945.

When the news came through, Diana was granted leave from prison, and the family gathered together in their London house to comfort each other. David would never recover from the loss of his only son. Diana, The Beautiful One The third sister, Diana (1910-), was always considered the most classically beautiful. She ended her first season as a debutante by becoming engaged to Bryan Guinness, heir to the fabulous Guinness Brewery fortune and one of the most eligible bachelors of the day. Several years and two sons later, she caused a scandal by divorcing him. Evidently theirs was a less-than-ideal marriage. They had only known each other three months when he proposed. Bryan mistook her for a fresh country girl while Diana had jumped into marriage to escape from her family. Truth be told, Diana was love with Sir Oswald Mosley. Leader of the British Union of Fascists (BUF) and its "defense force" of thuggish Blackshirts, Mosley was a sinister character, but also something of a buffoon. He may be best known as the model for P. G. Wodehouse's immortal character Sir Roderick Spode, leader of a fascist organization called the Black Shorts.

Mosley was also lampooned by Nancy in her farcical novel Wigs on the Green (1935). More disturbing to her friends and relatives than Mosley's politics was the fact that Diana was divorcing one man in order to live as the mistress of another. When Mosley's wife died unexpectedly, he and Diana wed. During their life together, they shared the same beliefs, campaigned together, and suffered the ignominy of being imprisoned together by the British government as German sympathizers during World War II. Nancy had informed on her sister, while Jessica never forgave Diana for her fascist views. Unity, The Fascist As girls in the 1930s, Jessica and Unity (1914-1948) shared a room. One end was decorated with Unity's fascist insignia, while at the other end Jessica displayed her communist library, copies of the Daily Worker, and a small bust of Lenin. The rest of the family regarded this ideological war as an amusing childish game rather than as an early sign of the division the family would face in the future. Rather boisterous as a teenager, Unity tormented the family's governesses and was expelled after a brief stint at school.

At home she practiced the art of sitting silently at meals and fixing her father in a stare until he exploded with irritation. Later, as a debutante, she horrified the London social scene by taking her pet rat to dances and wearing a flamboyantly fake tiara. She so enjoyed herself and amused her sisters that later, when she greeted everyone with the Nazi salute, they regarded it for a time as another one of her pranks. Unity Mitford's admiration for Hitler is well known. She liked the spectacle -- the oratory, uniform, marching, and music. As it did for so many young people in Germany, the pomp gave her a sense of identity, of belonging to something important. For his part, Hitler saw Unity as a perfect example of Aryan womanhood, and her connections with important people in English society were obviously useful. She became a member of his social circle, drawing Diana into it as well. Early in 1936, Diana married Mosley while staying with Unity at the Goebbels' house outside Berlin. When World War II came, Unity was so appalled at the idea of her country being at war with Germany that she tried to commit suicide by shooting herself in the head.

Although Hitler got her to the hospital and she recovered enough to be taken back to England, she was a semi-invalid for the rest of her days. Jessica, The Communist Jessica, or "Decca" (1917-1996), was the sister who least enjoyed her upbringing. As a young girl, she had a "running-away account"; she had a habit of saving up her pocket money, frequently informing her family that she would soon have enough to escape. Even her short education in Paris and her first London season left her feeling at odds with her family background. She was looking for a way out when she engineered a meeting with Esmond Romilly, Winston Churchill's 19-year-old "red" nephew who had run away from school to join the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. He was her soul mate and hero, and Jessica eventually joined him in Spain, where they were married. (Although Nancy sympathized with Jessica in her love for Edmond, she advised her not to run off to Spain with him.) Throughout their time together, they shared a passionate commitment to communism. When he was killed in World War II, shot down by Germans over the North Sea, Jessica was crushed.

She emigrated to the United States (later marrying progressive Oakland lawyer Robert Treuhaft) and began a series of written attacks on the establishment, most famously her scathing indictment of the funeral industry in her book The American Way of Death. Deborah, The Duchess As the youngest, Deborah, or "Debo" (1920--), was less energetically competitive than her siblings. Nancy called Debo "Nine" until she married, saying it was her mental age. She took advantage of Debo's sentimental nature by writing poems and stories to make her cry, one of which appears in Masterpiece Theatre's Love in a Cold Climate: "A little houseless match/It has no roof, no thatch/It lies alone, it makes no moan/That little houseless match." Eventually, Nancy had only to hold up a box of matches to make tears well in Debo's eyes. Much like Diana, Debo found her match shortly after coming out to London society. She'd met Andrew Cavendish, younger son of the 10th Duke of Devonshire, in a restaurant off Curzon Street. "If it wasn't love at first sight, it was certainly attraction at first sight," he later reported.

They became engaged in 1939 but kept their pledge secret, as, at age 19, they were considered too young to marry. They made it official the following April amid the bombed-out remains of the family's London home at 26 Rutland Gate. When Deborah's brother-in-law Billy (husband of Kathleen "Kick" Kennedy, sister to Jack, Bobby, and Ted) was hit by a sniper on the Belgian front, Andrew became heir to the dukedom, including the neglected family estate Chatsworth. Restoring and preserving this heirloom home would soon become their mission. Debo even joined the ranks of her published sisters, authoring The House, part autobiography, part history of Chatsworth, and a follow-up, The Estate. In addition to consulting on Masterpiece Theatre's Love in a Cold Climate, Debo has jealously guarded the memory of her older, if not wiser, sisters, endeavoring to block unflattering and unauthorized biographies.

As a result of their social and political exploits, the Mitfords captured the British media spotlight, dominating the front pages of splashy tabloids -- a public fascination that continues to this day, as new biographies try to reveal what kept these siblings burning bright. Lady Diana Mosley -- fascist member of Mitford clan - SFGate Lady Diana Mosley -- fascist member of Mitford clan Sarah Lyall, New York Times Published 4:00 am, Thursday, August 14, 2003 2003-08-14 04:00:00 PDT London -- Lady Diana Mosley , one of the famous Mitford sisters and a glamorous 1930s socialite who scandalously abandoned her husband, embraced fascism and married Sir Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists , died in Paris on Monday. She was 93. Lady Mosley's stubborn fascism and her unrepentant admiration for Hitler -- he and Josef Goebbels were guests at her wedding to Sir Oswald, in Berlin in 1936 -- made her a figure of hate to the British during World War II, and to some extent for the rest of her life.

Judged a danger to her country, she spent 2 1/2 years in Holloway Prison in London while war raged on the continent. After the war, she and Sir Oswald, who also served time in Holloway, moved to Orsay, Paris, where they lived happily, and only partly in disgrace, for the rest of their lives. He died in 1980. Although shunned by the British establishment, Lady Diana presided over a beautifully decorated house, Temple de la Gloire, where she gardened, wrote, read, gave interviews, kept up on London literary gossip and entertained an endless stream of glittery visitors who were, inevitably, thoroughly enchanted by her quick wit, sparkling appearance and sly sense of humor. She was one of the few people ever to maintain simultaneous friendships with Hitler and Churchill. Lady Diana Mosley was born the Honorable Diana Mitford, the third of the six Mitford girls (a brother, Tom, was killed in World War II).

They were fabled for their wit and luminous looks -- each one seemed to glitter more brightly than the next -- and their eccentric upbringing was immortalized in various books, including the novels "The Pursuit of Love," "Love in a Cold Climate" and others by Nancy Mitford , and "Hons and Rebels," a memoir by Jessica Mitford . Their father was Lord Redesdale, a blustery country aristocrat with little money and old-fashioned views. Nancy, an intimate of Evelyn Waugh 's, became a hugely successful novelist and essayist and ardent anti-fascist. Jessica became a communist, running away from home to join Esmond Romilly, a wastrel nephew of Churchill's , who had gone to Spain to work as a journalist in the Spanish Civil War. She later settled in Oakland and wrote "The American Way of Death," a brilliantly acerbic analysis of the American funeral industry, among other things. Unity, another sister, became a fanatical fascist, befriended Hitler and was so distraught when Britain entered World War II that she shot herself in the head, botching the suicide attempt but suffering extensive brain damage.

Deborah, another sister, married the Duke of Devonshire, one of the best catches in all of British bachelorhood. In a family of dazzling girls, Diana dazzled perhaps the brightest. "She was the nearest thing to Botticelli's Venus that I have ever seen," wrote James Lees-Milne , a family friend; Waugh, who dedicated "Vile Bodies" to her, said that her beauty "ran through the room like a peal of bells." At 18, she became engaged after a few weeks' acquaintance to the brewing heir Bryan Guinness , a match that seemed objectionable only to her mother -- he was "so frightfully rich," Lady Redesdale said. The two quickly had two sons. But in 1932 Diana Guinness left her husband for Oswald Mosley, the strikingly attractive leader of the fledgling British Union of Fascists, a bold step, not least because he was still married. (His wife conveniently died, of peritonitis, the following year.) Diana threw herself into her lover's cause, hoping to effect amity between fascist Germany and Britain.

After the two were married, in 1936, Lady Diana had two more sons, and devoted herself to raising them. She was arrested and jailed in 1940, when the second was just a baby. Lady Diana later reconciled with her sister Nancy, nursing her through the cancer that led to Nancy's death in 1973, and made peace with some, but by no means all, of her other relatives. Through it all, she was always impeccably dressed, always a gracious hostess and always intellectually vigorous, contributing book reviews to the Times of London , the Evening Standard and the Spectator, among other publications, and answering frankly and unflinchingly when interviewers and historians made pilgrimages to Paris to ask her about the old days. She remained passionate about Sir Oswald, the love of her life, to the end. "He appeared to me then as he does still, the cleverest, most balanced and most honest of all English politicians," she said in her memoir, "A Life of Contrasts." Nor did she ever fully denounce Hitler, although she deplored what she considered his excesses. "We all know that he was a monster, that he was cruel and did terrible things," she said.

"But that doesn't alter the fact that he was obviously an interesting figure." She added in an interview in 2000: "I was very fond of him. Very, very fond. " Latest from the SFGATE homepage: Click below for the top news from around the Bay Area and beyond. Sign up for our newsletters to be the first to learn about breaking news and more. Go to 'Sign In' and 'Manage Profile' at the top of the page. Lady Diana Mosley, Fascist Who Dazzled, Is Dead at 93 - The New York Times The New York Times World |Lady Diana Mosley, Fascist Who Dazzled, Is Dead at 93 Search Continue reading the main story Correction Appended Lady Diana Mosley, one of the famous Mitford sisters and a glamorous 1930's socialite who scandalously abandoned her husband, embraced fascism and married Sir Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists, died in Paris on Monday, her family said. She was 93.

A spokeswoman for her sister, the Duchess of Devonshire, told the BBC, ''We can confirm that she died peacefully, but we cannot say any more than that.'' Lady Mosley's stubborn fascism and her unrepentant admiration for Hitler -- he and Josef Goebbels were guests at her wedding to Sir Oswald, in Berlin in 1936 -- made her a figure of hate to the British during World War II, and to some extent for the rest of her life. Judged a danger to her country, she spent two and a half years in Holloway Prison in London while war raged on the Continent. After the war, she and Sir Oswald, who also served time in Holloway, moved to Orsay, Paris, where they lived happily, and only partly in disgrace, for the rest of their lives (he died in 1980).

Although shunned by the British establishment -- British ambassadors to France were instructed not to invite her to the embassy, for instance -- Lady Mosley presided over a beautifully decorated house, Temple de la Gloire, where she gardened, wrote, read, gave interviews, kept up on London literary gossip and entertained an endless stream of glittery visitors who were, inevitably, thoroughly enchanted by her quick wit, sparkling appearance, and sly sense of humor. Continue reading the main story She was one of the few people ever to maintain simultaneous friendships with Hitler and Churchill. ''There were so many paradoxes about this most beautiful, most intelligent, and most beguiling of the celebrated Mitford sisters,'' the novelist and critic A. N. Wilson, a friend of Lady Mosley, wrote in The Daily Telegraph. Also in The Daily Telegraph, the historian Andrew Roberts described succumbing, however unwillingly, ''to the full force of her Mitfordesque charm,'' even as Lady Mosley calmly announced that although Hitler ''was to blame for the extermination of the Jews,'' he was also perhaps the most attractive man she had ever met.

Advertisement Continue reading the main story Lady Diana Mosley was born the Honorable Diana Mitford in 1910, the third of the six Mitford girls (a brother, Tom, was killed in World War II). They were fabled for their wit and luminous looks -- each one seemed to glitter more brightly than the next -- and their eccentric upbringing was immortalized in various books, including the novels ''The Pursuit of Love,'' ''Love in a Cold Climate,'' and others by Nancy Mitford; and ''Hons and Rebels,'' a memoir by Jessica Mitford. Their father was Lord Redesdale, a blustery country aristocrat with little money and old-fashioned views, fond of outdoor pursuits and famously bad-tempered about the outside society for which his daughters longed. They found it, in wildly different ways. Nancy, an intimate of Evelyn Waugh, became a hugely successful novelist and essayist and ardent anti-fascist.

Jessica became a Communist, running away from home to join Esmond Romilly, a wastrel nephew of Churchill, who had gone to Spain to work as a journalist in the Spanish Civil War (she later settled in the United States and wrote ''The American Way of Death,'' a brilliantly acerbic analysis of the American funeral industry, among other things). Unity, another sister, became a fanatical fascist, befriended Hitler and was so distraught when Britain entered World War II that she shot herself in the head, botching the suicide attempt but suffering extensive brain damage. Deborah, another sister, married the Duke of Devonshire, one of the best catches in all of British bachelorhood. In a family of dazzling girls, Diana dazzled perhaps the brightest.

''She was the nearest thing to Botticelli's Venus that I have ever seen,'' wrote James Lees-Milne, a family friend; Evelyn Waugh, who dedicated ''Vile Bodies'' to her, said that her beauty ''ran through the room like a peal of bells.'' At 18, she became engaged after a few weeks' acquaintance to the brewing heir Bryan Guinness, a match that seemed objectionable only to her mother -- he was ''so frightfully rich,'' Lady Redesdale said. Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up Privacy Policy The two quickly had two sons. With her beauty and wit, and his money, the Guinnesses became the center of young London society, but Diana wanted more. In 1932, she left her husband for Oswald Mosley, the strikingly attractive leader of the fledgling British Union of Fascists, a bold step, not least because he was still married (his wife conveniently died, of peritonitis, the following year). Diana threw herself into her lover's cause, hoping to effect amity between fascist Germany and Britain.

After the two were married, in 1936, Diana Mosley had two more sons, and devoted herself to raising them. She was arrested and jailed in 1940, when the second was just a baby. Though the prison years were miserable, she tried to make light of them after the fact, as she did about her exile in Paris. ''The story about us being pariahs and all that, it's all nonsense really,'' she told an interviewer last year. ''I've never had rudeness or disagreeableness ever. At meetings there were rows with Communists and so on. If you met the Communists at dinner, you wouldn't have a row.'' Sir Oswald Mosley, a hereditary baronet, died in 1980, and Lady Mosley never remarried. She reconciled with her sister Nancy, nursing her through the cancer that led to Nancy's death in 1973, and made peace with some, but by no means all, of her other relatives.

Through it all, she was always impeccably dressed, always a gracious hostess, and always intellectually vigorous, contributing book reviews to The Times of London, the Evening Standard, and the Spectator, among other publications, and answering frankly and unflinchingly when interviewers and historians made pilgrimages to Paris to ask her about the old days. She is survived by a far-flung extended family, including the Duchess of Devonshire, her last surviving sister; four sons, two by each of her husbands; and a large number of grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Advertisement Continue reading the main story She remained passionate about Sir Oswald, the love of her life, to the end. ''He appeared to me then as he does still, the cleverest, most balanced, and most honest of all English politicians,'' she said in her memoir, ''A Life of Contrasts.'' Nor did she ever fully denounce Hitler -- she was too stubbornly loyal to her beliefs and her behavior for that, her friends believe -- although she deplored his excesses. ''We all know that he was a monster, that he was cruel and did terrible things,'' she said.

''But that doesn't alter the fact that he was obviously an interesting figure.'' She added, in an interview in 2000: ''I was very fond of him. Very, very fond.'' Correction: September 9, 2003, Tuesday An obituary on Aug. 14 about Diana Mosley, the British aristocrat who was a staunch supporter of Hitler and fascism, referred incompletely to Esmond Romilly, who had married one of her sisters, Jessica Mitford. Although Mr. Romilly was a rebellious young man of privilege, he also became a published writer and an ardent anti-fascist who fought against Franco in Spain and, while serving in the Royal Canadian Air Force, died in 1941, at 23, in a bombing raid against Nazi Germany.

Lady Diana Mosley, Fascist Who Dazzled, Is Dead at 93 - The New York Times The New York Times World |Lady Diana Mosley, Fascist Who Dazzled, Is Dead at 93 Search Continue reading the main story Correction Appended Lady Diana Mosley, one of the famous Mitford sisters and a glamorous 1930's socialite who scandalously abandoned her husband, embraced fascism and married Sir Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists, died in Paris on Monday, her family said. She was 93. A spokeswoman for her sister, the Duchess of Devonshire, told the BBC, ''We can confirm that she died peacefully, but we cannot say any more than that.'' Lady Mosley's stubborn fascism and her unrepentant admiration for Hitler -- he and Josef Goebbels were guests at her wedding to Sir Oswald, in Berlin in 1936 -- made her a figure of hate to the British during World War II, and to some extent for the rest of her life. Judged a danger to her country, she spent two and a half years in Holloway Prison in London while war raged on the Continent.

After the war, she and Sir Oswald, who also served time in Holloway, moved to Orsay, Paris, where they lived happily, and only partly in disgrace, for the rest of their lives (he died in 1980). Although shunned by the British establishment -- British ambassadors to France were instructed not to invite her to the embassy, for instance -- Lady Mosley presided over a beautifully decorated house, Temple de la Gloire, where she gardened, wrote, read, gave interviews, kept up on London literary gossip and entertained an endless stream of glittery visitors who were, inevitably, thoroughly enchanted by her quick wit, sparkling appearance, and sly sense of humor. Continue reading the main story She was one of the few people ever to maintain simultaneous friendships with Hitler and Churchill. ''There were so many paradoxes about this most beautiful, most intelligent, and most beguiling of the celebrated Mitford sisters,'' the novelist and critic A. N. Wilson, a friend of Lady Mosley, wrote in The Daily Telegraph.

Also in The Daily Telegraph, the historian Andrew Roberts described succumbing, however unwillingly, ''to the full force of her Mitfordesque charm,'' even as Lady Mosley calmly announced that although Hitler ''was to blame for the extermination of the Jews,'' he was also perhaps the most attractive man she had ever met. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Lady Diana Mosley was born the Honorable Diana Mitford in 1910, the third of the six Mitford girls (a brother, Tom, was killed in World War II). They were fabled for their wit and luminous looks -- each one seemed to glitter more brightly than the next -- and their eccentric upbringing was immortalized in various books, including the novels ''The Pursuit of Love,'' ''Love in a Cold Climate,'' and others by Nancy Mitford; and ''Hons and Rebels,'' a memoir by Jessica Mitford. Their father was Lord Redesdale, a blustery country aristocrat with little money and old-fashioned views, fond of outdoor pursuits and famously bad-tempered about the outside society for which his daughters longed. They found it, in wildly different ways.

Nancy, an intimate of Evelyn Waugh, became a hugely successful novelist and essayist and ardent anti-fascist. Jessica became a Communist, running away from home to join Esmond Romilly, a wastrel nephew of Churchill, who had gone to Spain to work as a journalist in the Spanish Civil War (she later settled in the United States and wrote ''The American Way of Death,'' a brilliantly acerbic analysis of the American funeral industry, among other things). Unity, another sister, became a fanatical fascist, befriended Hitler and was so distraught when Britain entered World War II that she shot herself in the head, botching the suicide attempt but suffering extensive brain damage. Deborah, another sister, married the Duke of Devonshire, one of the best catches in all of British bachelorhood. In a family of dazzling girls, Diana dazzled perhaps the brightest.

''She was the nearest thing to Botticelli's Venus that I have ever seen,'' wrote James Lees-Milne, a family friend; Evelyn Waugh, who dedicated ''Vile Bodies'' to her, said that her beauty ''ran through the room like a peal of bells.'' At 18, she became engaged after a few weeks' acquaintance to the brewing heir Bryan Guinness, a match that seemed objectionable only to her mother -- he was ''so frightfully rich,'' Lady Redesdale said. Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up Privacy Policy The two quickly had two sons. With her beauty and wit, and his money, the Guinnesses became the center of young London society, but Diana wanted more. In 1932, she left her husband for Oswald Mosley, the strikingly attractive leader of the fledgling British Union of Fascists, a bold step, not least because he was still married (his wife conveniently died, of peritonitis, the following year). Diana threw herself into her lover's cause, hoping to effect amity between fascist Germany and Britain.

After the two were married, in 1936, Diana Mosley had two more sons, and devoted herself to raising them. She was arrested and jailed in 1940, when the second was just a baby. Though the prison years were miserable, she tried to make light of them after the fact, as she did about her exile in Paris. ''The story about us being pariahs and all that, it's all nonsense really,'' she told an interviewer last year. ''I've never had rudeness or disagreeableness ever. At meetings there were rows with Communists and so on. If you met the Communists at dinner, you wouldn't have a row.'' Sir Oswald Mosley, a hereditary baronet, died in 1980, and Lady Mosley never remarried. She reconciled with her sister Nancy, nursing her through the cancer that led to Nancy's death in 1973, and made peace with some, but by no means all, of her other relatives.

Through it all, she was always impeccably dressed, always a gracious hostess, and always intellectually vigorous, contributing book reviews to The Times of London, the Evening Standard, and the Spectator, among other publications, and answering frankly and unflinchingly when interviewers and historians made pilgrimages to Paris to ask her about the old days. She is survived by a far-flung extended family, including the Duchess of Devonshire, her last surviving sister; four sons, two by each of her husbands; and a large number of grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Advertisement Continue reading the main story She remained passionate about Sir Oswald, the love of her life, to the end. ''He appeared to me then as he does still, the cleverest, most balanced, and most honest of all English politicians,'' she said in her memoir, ''A Life of Contrasts.'' Nor did she ever fully denounce Hitler -- she was too stubbornly loyal to her beliefs and her behavior for that, her friends believe -- although she deplored his excesses. ''We all know that he was a monster, that he was cruel and did terrible things,'' she said.

''But that doesn't alter the fact that he was obviously an interesting figure.'' She added, in an interview in 2000: ''I was very fond of him. Very, very fond.'' Correction: September 9, 2003, Tuesday An obituary on Aug. 14 about Diana Mosley, the British aristocrat who was a staunch supporter of Hitler and fascism, referred incompletely to Esmond Romilly, who had married one of her sisters, Jessica Mitford. Although Mr. Romilly was a rebellious young man of privilege, he also became a published writer and an ardent anti-fascist who fought against Franco in Spain and, while serving in the Royal Canadian Air Force, died in 1941, at 23, in a bombing raid against Nazi Germany.

The Mitfords: Six sisters who captured the maelstrom - BBC News BBC News The Mitfords: Six sisters who captured the maelstrom 25 September 2014 Image copyright PA Image caption The Mitford sisters (clockwise from top left): Unity; Jessica; Diana; Nancy; Deborah; Pamela The death of Deborah Mitford, the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, signals the end of an era. From the birth of the eldest Mitford girl, 110 years ago, this famous family have transfixed us, writes Lyndsy Spence. Born to Lord and Lady Redesdale, known as Farve and Muv, the six Mitford girls - Nancy, Pamela, Diana, Unity, Jessica and Deborah - experienced an upbringing steeped in eccentricity. Living in genteel poverty in stately homes, the girls variously believed in poltergeists, pre-destination and barmy superstitions. Their philistine father's loathing of foreigners, Catholics and anywhere "abroad" ended up instilling in his daughters an individualist mindset and the confidence to pursue their own strong-minded opinions.

Their vague and domesticated mother - odd in an age where servants exclusively ran aristocratic homes - gave the girls a healthy dose of common sense. Hens were purchased with the intent of selling eggs to smart London restaurants, linen napkins were abandoned because of the cost of laundering them, and the children were forced to follow a kosher diet. Shellfish, sausages and "the dirty pig" were forbidden. The reason was an odd belief that cancer was less prevalent among Jews. But medicine was withheld and operations were to be performed only as a last resort. School was frowned upon, in case the girls should develop thick calves from playing hockey. As such, a succession of dotty governesses attempted to educate the girls. And, aside from their beloved nanny, known as Blor, serving as a firm but fair disciplinarian, the girls were left to their own devices. Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Unity (standing) aged nine, and Jessica aged six With brains, beauty and a scathing sense of humour, the press heralded the girls as celebrities before they did anything to merit such praise.

On the fringes of the Bright Young Things and writing farcical novels on the upper classes at play, Nancy's earliest literary work was overshadowed by her sisters' political views. The Mitford girls! The Mitford Girls/ I love them for their sins John Betjeman Diana made a splash on British society when she married the brewing heir Bryan Guinness, but it was her affair with the leader of the British Union of Fascists, Sir Oswald Mosley, that brought her lifelong infamy. Caring little for social mores, Diana lived openly as Mosley's mistress, followed by a spell in Holloway prison. She became the catalyst for the progression of the Mitford sisters, and how the sisters reacted to the turbulent 1930s. Unity, the restless middle child, followed Diana's lead and took up with the fascist cause, donning a Black Shirt and parading through Hyde Park, accosting the communists. Moving to Germany at the age of 19, she fulfilled her ambition of meeting Adolf Hitler, worming her way into his inner-circle and plunging head on into Nazi politics. Following a clumsy suicide attempt in 1939, she died a few years later when the bullet-wound became infected.

A sad, wasted life - she ignited more fury than pity. Image copyright PA Image caption Diana with her husband, the British fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley Jessica, known to friends and family as Decca, counteracted Unity's Nazism and became a communist. Eloping with her fellow communist cousin, Esmond Romilly, she ran off to fight the fascists during the Spanish Civil War. Shunning her aristocratic upbringing, she moved to the US, where she fought for civil rights and wrote bestselling books, including Hons & Rebels and The American Way of Death. She went on to become a late-blooming pop star, singing with her group Decca & The Dectones. Nancy was a socialist. At the end of the war, she escaped a dull marriage by moving to Paris, where she wrote her novels. She dressed in Dior and carried on a hopeless affair with Charles de Gaulle's right-hand man, Gaston Palewski. The Mitford family Jessica Mitford (1917-1996) Deborah Mitford (1920-2014) Deborah led a contented country life. Riding and hunting were her favourite pursuits, and she described herself as apolitical.

She was a popular debutante, and during her "season" she met Kathleen Kennedy, and her brother John - the future US president. Deborah married Lord Andrew Cavendish in 1941, and the Cavendish family became intertwined through marriage (Kathleen and Billy Cavendish wed in 1939) with the Kennedys. Thus Deborah was linked with the most famous of presidents, and to Adele Astaire, sister of Fred, who was an aunt by marriage. Image copyright PA Image caption Deborah on her estate at Chatsworth Pamela, although she shunned the limelight, married the millionaire scientist Derek Jackson. She motored around Europe alone and became one of the first women to be on a transatlantic passenger flight. Her sense of adventure was balanced with a quiet domesticity, and she was happy at home in her kitchen garden and tending to her animals. Writers of period dramas and historical fiction look to the world of the Mitfords for inspiration. Julian Fellowes - writer and creator of Downton Abbey - could surely not have created Violet, the Dowager Countess of Grantham, without using an ounce of inspiration from Nancy Mitford.

It was Nancy's eye for parody that found humour in the dialogue of the upper-classes. Image copyright AP Image caption Lady Violet (Maggie Smith): Inspired by Nancy Mitford's work? Her infamous essay on U & Non-U language was ridiculed as snobbish after publication, but was in fact a great tease during the provincialism of the 1950s. It has become an established guide to social climbers and the upwardly mobile. An inspiration to the artists of their day, Diana was portrayed by Evelyn Waugh in Vile Bodies, Deborah was painted by Lucian Freud and Jessica had a cardboard coffin named after her. John Betjeman - who at one time was in love with Pamela - celebrated the sisters in a verse, the first lines of which read: "The Mitford girls! The Mitford Girls/ I love them for their sins". Due to their association with the dictators of the 1930s, and their familial ties with Winston Churchill (Clementine Churchill was Lord Redesdale's cousin), the six girls had a front-row seat to the great events of the 20th Century.

Further reading Image caption Megan Dodds and Rosamund Pike in the 2001 BBC adaptation of Love In A Cold Climate The Pursuit of Love/Love In A Cold Climate: Nancy's comic novels portraying aristocratic life between the wars - "Life is sometimes sad and often dull, but there are currants in the cake, and here is one of them." Hons and Rebels: Jessica's memoir describing her childhood, and eventual elopement with her cousin - "In the windows, still to be seen, are swastikas carved into the glass with a diamond ring, and for every swastika a carefully delineated hammer and sickle. They were put there by my sister Unity and myself when we were children." The American Way of Death: After emigrating to the US, Jessica became a campaigning journalist. This 1963 book is an expose of sharp practices in the funeral industry - "I have nothing against undertakers personally.

It's just that I wouldn't want one to bury my sister." The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters: A collection of the six sisters' letters to each other, edited by Diana's daughter-in-law, Charlotte Mosley Their sparkling wit and private family jokes were recorded by Nancy in her most celebrated novels, The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate. Although the subject of endless documentaries, biographies and volumes of letters, they are a sextet that continue to beguile. From novelist, farmer, fascist, communist and duchess - there is a Mitford girl for everyone. The death of the last Mitford sister, Deborah, Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, marks the end of a certain era, but for us inter-war enthusiasts, the fascination is timeless. Lyndsy Spence is the author of the The Mitford Girls' Guide to Life and The Mitford Society Blog.

You can follow the Magazine on Twitter and on Facebook Formula One and Beyond: The Autobiography by Max Mosley, book review | The Independent Reviews Formula One and Beyond: The Autobiography by Max Mosley, book review His mother was a Mitford, his father a fascist leader – but Max Mosley has forged his own special kind of fame, writes Laura Thompson Thursday 18 June 2015 13:00 BST Click to follow The Independent Culture In the limelight: Mosley says he attended S&M parties when the mood took him Micha Theiner Max Mosley is the youngest son of Sir Oswald Mosley, who, throughout the 1930s, led the fascist British Union party, and of Diana, the most beautiful of the six Mitford sisters, who married Sir Oswald at the home of Josef Goebbels. By late June 1940, when Mosley was 11 weeks old, both his parents had been imprisoned under the wartime Regulation 18b, which could detain without trial those deemed a possible threat to national security.

Until the Mosleys' release in November 1943, their baby son was effectively orphaned, cared for by a nanny and his Mitford aunt Pamela, spending the odd night at his parents' "quarters" in Holloway jail. Such a start would today be regarded as tragically formative, but introspective self-pity is neither a Mosley nor a Mitford trait. Formula One and Beyond dedicates just four paragraphs to its author's bizarre early years. "My parents' imprisonment made very little difference to me," states Mosley, with the blunt honesty that characterises this book, and that is remarkably reminiscent of his mother. Diana was never able to lie, even about her liking for Hitler. She was unafraid of public opinion, a trait that her son has apparently inherited; or perhaps found it necessary to acquire. At Oxford, he was told that, as a Mosley, he would be torn to shreds if he spoke at the Union. "I found the challenge intriguing," he writes, and proceeded to become the Union secretary. Nevertheless, he shied away from the political career that sometimes attracted him, and at which he would surely have been gifted.

His long-term associate Bernie Ecclestone once remarked that Mosley would have been "a bloody good prime minister". The same thing was said about his father back in the 1920s, before he became a pariah. Mosley admits that, in youth, he supported his father's politics. At the same time, he describes himself as "slightly left", and became a member of Tony Blair's Labour Party. Again like his mother, he is an enigma; all the more so, somehow, for the straightforwardness with which he tells his story. One never doubts his truthfulness, but he is a fearless chronicler of facts rather than feelings. This is actually rather compelling: one can have enough of autobiographical soul-baring. In 1961 he watched Stirling Moss win a Formula One race at Silverstone: "I knew instantly this was something I absolutely had to do." Of course, lots of young men like fast cars. But Mosley went much further than that.

Although he had a career as a barrister – and a wife, Jean – he threw himself into driving, and on one occasion actually overtook Graham Hill; he started a constructors' team, March, with a loan of £2,500 from his mother; he joined forces with Ecclestone, with whom he won the battle for F1's television rights and helped transform the sport for the modern era. True to form, Mosley does not really analyse why motor racing engaged him. The closest he comes is when he describes his driving debut in 1966: "It was the first time I felt that whatever interest there might be was about me rather than my family." He was believed to be a relation of a coach builder, Alf Moseley, rather than of the black-shirted Sir Oswald. The motor racing of that era had a tremendous casual glamour – with figures like James Hunt, conjured here as a carefree, coke-snorting charmer – but it was also insanely dangerous. It became Mosley's great crusade to improve safety, on public roads as well as racing circuits.

He writes at length about the measures taken after the deaths of Ayrton Senna and Roland Ratzenberger in 1994 (Mosley attended Ratzenberger's modest funeral, while "the great and good of Formula One" crowded into the state ceremony for Senna). Since that time, no comparable catastrophe has ensued. Read more Guinnesses, Mitfords, and Mosleys - The New Yorker Guinnesses, Mitfords, and Mosleys September 22, 2011 In Rebecca Mead’s profile of Daphne Guinness in this week’s issue, Guinness reflects on her great aunt, Unity Mitford, who was a member of Hitler’s inner circle and shot herself in the head after Britain declared war on Germany in 1939: “Why didn’t Unity shoot Hitler instead of herself? Then we’d be descended from heroes instead of villains.” Unity was one of the six Mitford sisters (there was also a brother, Thomas), who achieved fame—and, in some cases, infamy—during the twentieth century.

Writing about the siblings in a 1995 Talk story , Anthony Haden-Guest gave this précis: Jessica Mitford … was the only populist among six sisters whom even the most shameless pulp novelist would hardly dare invent. Nancy Mitford, the oldest of the daughters of a remarkably bad-natured English aristocrat, Lord Redesdale, became a novelist. Pamela Mitford was described by the poet John Betjeman as “gentle Pamela, the most rural of them all.” Diana Mitford married Oswald Mosley, who founded the British Union of Fascists. Unity Mitford had a passion for Adolf Hitler … and Deborah Mitford is now the Duchess of Devonshire. According to Mollie Panter-Downes’s 1960 review of Jessica Mitford’s autobiography, “Daughters and Rebels,” these unlikely life choices should come as no surprise given the manner in which the Mitfords were raised: marooned at Swinbrook, the family home in the Cotswolds, with a father who was perennially outraged by the antics of foreigners and believed that germs were a hoax perpetrated by the medical profession.

“Oliver Twist was so lucky to live in a fascinating orphanage,” Jessica once said, enviously. While Jessica veered to the left, Unity and Diana were drawn to the far right. Though she was first married to Bryan Guinness, the second Baron Moyne (Daphne’s grandfather), Diana for many years conducted an affair with Sir Oswald Mosley. It was not until 1936—three years after the death of Mosley’s wife Cynthia Curzon, the daughter of a former Viceroy of India—that Mosley and Diana were married. As Mead reports, the Mosleys’ nuptials took place at the home of Joseph Goebbels, where Hitler was a guest. While Mosley is most often recalled as the founder of the British Union of Fascists, his career in British politics was a long and winding one, which at times paralleled and starkly contrasted with that of his contemporary and fellow aristocrat Sir Winston Churchill.

(In fact, the Mitfords were cousins of Churchill’s wife, Clementine.) David Cannadine makes this comparison between Churchill and Mosely in his 1991 review of “Rules of the Game/Beyond the Pale,” a book about Mosley written by his eldest son, Nicholas. As Cannadine notes, Mosley began his political career as a Conservative, but soon left the Tories to join the Labor party. Early on, he was known for his left-leaning advocacy of greater government intervention in dealing with high unemployment. He was even seen by some as a possible future Prime Minister. Mosley also had a reputation as a philanderer, exclusively pursuing upper class women. His m.o., according to his son’s book, could be summed up as “Vote Labor; sleep Tory.” Eventually, he grew frustrated with the Labor Party’s refusal to take action on unemployment. In 1931, he resigned and founded the short-lived New Party before creating the British Union of Fascists the following year, “effectively giving up Parliamentary politics for the politics of the streets,” as Cannadine writes. (That year, he also began his affair with Mitford.) The B.U.F.

received financing from Lord Rothermere, the right-wing newspaper baron, and also from Mussolini. At its height, it claimed fifty thousand members, but never achieved significant success at the polls. Its anti-Semitic and pro-German rhetoric were increasingly at odds with public sentiment in Britain. With the coming of the Second World War, the party was dissolved and the Mosleys imprisoned. After the war, Mosley founded the Union Movement, which promoted a right-wing, anti-immigrant agenda in Britain and was linked to a series of disturbances in the forties and fifties. In 1948, Rebecca West wrote a two-part article about unrest in North and West London called “Heil Hamm.” (“Hamm” was Jeffrey Hamm, a former B.U.F.

member, who headed up the British League of Ex-Servicemen and Women; West wrote that she was “enchanted by an anti-Semite whose name was Hamm.”) In the first part of the article, West described a visit to Camden, where she came upon a Fascist rally: As I made my way toward this end of the street, a man stepped out of the crowd and came up to me, holding out a pamphlet that bore on its cover a photograph of Sir Oswald Mosley. I found this shocking and horrible. Mosley had, year in, year out, tried to break down the civil order of England: he had raised a private army that introduced street fighting and race conflict into a community till then relatively free from those infections; he had tried to bind England to Mussolini and Hitler, to Lipari and Belsen. I felt the same embarrassment that used to come upon me when I went into Germany and saw the swastika flag flying from a public building or carried by a schoolteacher at the head of a crocodile. It was as if a man walked into a room with his clothes held open to show his cancer.

The articles—and the complete archives of The New Yorker, back to 1925—are available to subscribers. Non-subscribers can purchase the individual issues. Any favorite New Yorker articles come to mind? Send us an e-mail . Jon Michaud is a novelist and the head librarian at The Center for Fiction. Unity Mitford: English debutante staged Nazi orgies for Hitler and lost her virginity to Oswald Mosley | Daily Mail Online The English debutante who staged Nazi orgies as a gift of love to Hitler: She lost her virginity to Oswald Mosley on a billiard table... Then she targeted the Fuhrer Unity Mitford's scandalous liaisons are unveiled in a new biography Aristocratic family tried to paint relationship with Hitler as youthful fancy Author claims to have credible sources saying her antics were not naive At 18 years old she is said to have met Oswald Mosley, who was married, at a party in 1932 when he was having an affair with her married sister, Diana Letters reveal she boasted about her anti-semitism as a young woman She met with Hitler once a fortnight between 1935 and September 1939

Question: Which of the Mitford sisters married Oswald Mosley and became a fascist?
Answer: Diana