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. Amazon.com: Love from Nancy: The Letters of Nancy Mitford (9780340599211): Nancy Mitford, Charlotte Mosley: Books 4.0 out of 5 stars The Real Thing By L.

Dann on May 19, 2002 Letters like these are treasures of intimate understanding that transcend the paparrazzi snapshots and questionable commentary of the contemporary celebrity gossip industry. They are not 100% but certainly more accurate represntations of the information that is not a part of the public identity. Indeed, Nancy Mitford, her family and her celebrated friend, Evelyn Waugh, were represented often in the gossip columns of their lifetimes. To the degree that Lady Redesdale, NM's mother, commented that as soon as she read a headline that said "Peer's daughter..." she knew it would be one of her own. The letters compiled here, relect the 'way' it was at the parties, what NM's often wicked but always colorful take was on the 'important' guests. Some of these were, Princess Margaret in a ghastly mini dress and bouffant hairdo, or Churchill's very less impressive, often drunk, son Randolph, and innumerable royals, politicians and artists, all discussed without awe, or particular excitement, just ordinary people, being foolish or, as she would have it, boors.

Nancy Mitford's life spanned a period in history that seems impossibly long, and long ago. People, I have learned, become implanted in a time, for better or worse, and for Nancy this was the age known largely by art as "between the wars." It is those times, in the decadence and continued supremacy of the class system in England, that Nancy could embody the comedy of aristocratic insularity being pummelled by the modern world. Nancy was far more a representative of the old, but capable of making ideological decisions that her sisters and parents despaired of. They, for anyone not already drowned in the subject, went largely pro-German, with one, Unity, an intimate with Hitler before England entered the war. Another, Jessica, was a communist, and transplant to America, for which she was more condemned. The bulk of the correspondence is certainly lively, and in no way self-centered, or particularly dense. This holds true even when death or some other tragedy overtakes her. The oddest to me was her comment that Unity had been taken to a concentration camp and that they would leave her there for a while to learn a few things before getting her out.

Either that is British aristocratic detachment that I fail to get, or else she did not know much about concentration camps. The only obstacle to incredible fun reading is the footnote requirements. They certainly are necessary for comprehension of who people are and what they're referencing, but they do make it a bit choppy and annoying. Still, it was an extraordinary time, as Nancy would say, between the fascists and the Bolshies, as well as the hilarious anti-foreigner burlesque that her father's actions brought to life in her novels. They may have appeared extreme however, the letters suggest their accuracy as well as their shared viewpoint, if not enactments, throughout the upper classes of that period. Nancy moved to France after the war and horrible blitz, never to return to England. In her charge to get away from the weight of her very visible life there, she made but minor progress. Almost each letter has at its essence, the perspective as well as many references to her eccentric family, and its myriad political and social highways that led seemingly everywhere. If we did not have this unique vantage point, these names would be connected only to history's image, or critical reviews.

Nancy makes history, quite filled with very human players, from DeGaulle to Princess Elizabeth, to Anthony Eden, to rock and roll She wore Dior, summered in Venice, and lived for 30 some years in Paris, but she remained eminently British aristocrat, as did those for whom she was enormously, and eternally loyal. By A reader on October 5, 2002 Format: Hardcover One summer I read all the Thomas Hardy books in my library. Another I spent reading all I could find on the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. This was my Mitford summer. It began with Mary Lovell's, "The Sisters" and I've read most of the Mitford biographies and novels that I could find. I am enjoying this book for the letters and pictures. The footnotes don't bother me because I know who most of the people are from my reading of English history. French phrases don't bother me because I know enough French to be able to understand them altho it is nice to have translations given. I believe young readers may have a problem with this book because they do not understand how it once was.

I was a small child during WWII and didn't suffer as much as people in England did. The Mitfords were a wonderfully strange family and readers probably should read Mary Lovell's book first as background. I love Nancy's sharp observations and style. It saddens me that she didn't like Americans. I wonder why. I believe she was one of the most interesting of the Mitford sisters, but they were each special in their own way. I am just so sorry she had such a painful illness at the end. It was very sad to read of her last days. Nancy Mitford (Author of The Pursuit of Love) edit data Nancy Mitford, CBE (28 November 1904, London – 30 June 1973, Versailles), styled The Hon. Nancy Mitford before her marriage and The Hon. Mrs Peter Rodd thereafter, was an English novelist and biographer, one of the Bright Young People on the London social scene in the inter-war years. She was born at 1 Graham Street (now Graham Place) in Belgravia, London, the eldest daughter of Lord Redesdale and was brought up at Asthall Manor in Oxfordshire.

She was the eldest of the six controversial Mitford sisters. She is best remembered for her series of novels about upper-class life in England and France, particularly the four published after 1945; but she also wrote four well-received, well-researched popular biographies (of Louis XIV, Madame de Pom Nancy Mitford, CBE (28 November 1904, London – 30 June 1973, Versailles), styled The Hon. Nancy Mitford before her marriage and The Hon. Mrs Peter Rodd thereafter, was an English novelist and biographer, one of the Bright Young People on the London social scene in the inter-war years. She was born at 1 Graham Street (now Graham Place) in Belgravia, London, the eldest daughter of Lord Redesdale and was brought up at Asthall Manor in Oxfordshire. She was the eldest of the six controversial Mitford sisters.

She is best remembered for her series of novels about upper-class life in England and France, particularly the four published after 1945; but she also wrote four well-received, well-researched popular biographies (of Louis XIV, Madame de Pompadour, Voltaire, and Frederick the Great). She was one of the noted Mitford sisters and the first to publicise the extraordinary family life of her very English and very eccentric family, giving rise to a "Mitford industry" which continues.

Her Published Works: A Talent to Annoy; Essays, Journalism and Reviews 1929–1968 edited by Charlotte Mosley (1986) Collections of Letters: Love from Nancy: The Letters of Nancy Mitford edited by Charlotte Mosley (1993) The Letters of Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh edited by Charlotte Mosley (1996) The Bookshop at 10 Curzon Street: Letters between Nancy Mitford and Heywood Hill 1952–73 edited by John Saumarez Smith (2004) The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters edited by Charlotte Mosley (2007) Works as Editor: The Ladies of Alderley: Letters 1841–1850 (1938) The Stanleys of Alderley: Their letters 1851–1865 (1939) (Mitford edited these two volumes of letters, written by the family of her great-grandparents, Edward Stanley, 2nd Baron Stanley of Alderley and his wife Henrietta Maria, daughter of the 13th Viscount Dillon).

Noblesse Oblige (1956) The Pursuit of Love & Love in a Cold Climate: Two Novels: Nancy Mitford: 9780375718991: Amazon.com: Books Editorial Reviews Amazon.com Review Few aristocratic English families of the 20th century have enjoyed quite the delicious notoriety that the Mitford sisters courted in the years bracketed by two world wars. For a start, two of the girls, Unity and Diana, were Fascists (the former was a friend of Hitler and Goebbels, and the latter married Sir Oswald Mosley, founder of the British Union of Fascists). Two others took the writing route: Jessica ran away from home and became a famous muckraking journalist, and Nancy composed maliciously witty--and transparently autobiographical--novels as well as several biographies. The Pursuit of Love (1945), her greatest fictional success, and its companion, Love in a Cold Climate (1949), keep closely to the spirit (and details) of their youthful amusements and more grown-up adventures.

Seen through the adoring eyes of Fanny Logan, the self-effacing cousin who records their shenanigans with a wicked sincerity, the Radletts of Alconleigh shine with Gloucestershire glamour: apoplectic Uncle Matthew; Lord Alconleigh (modeled to a fine nuance after Mitford's father, Lord Redesdale, who like Uncle Matthew used to hunt his children with bloodhounds); his kind, rather vague wife, Aunt Sadie; as well as Fanny's favorite cousin Linda and the other six Radlett children. The Radlett daughters and Fanny wait impatiently for life to become interesting. Because of their station, however, nothing but marriage is expected of them, so they hurl themselves at love like crusaders, with varied and always fascinating results. At one point Fanny recounts: A few minutes only after Linda had left me to go back to London, Christian and the comrades, I had another caller. This time it was Lord Merlin...."This is a bad business," he said, abruptly, and without preamble, though I had not seen him for several years. "I'm just back from Rome, and what do I find--Linda and Christian Talbot.

It's an extraordinary thing that I can't ever leave England without Linda getting herself mixed up with some thoroughly undesirable character. This is a disaster--how far has it gone? Can nothing be done?" The Pursuit of Love follows the romantic fortunes of Linda Radlett, while Love in a Cold Climate ventures further afield with the story of Polly Hampton's shocking love affair and its unexpectedly funny aftermath. Fanny's inexhaustible narration is a pleasant buffer for Mitford's deft teasing, which dances along just this side of mockery. The author of U and Non-U, a famous tongue-in-cheek treatise on the shibboleths of upper-class mores, Mitford often leaves the reader wondering just where she stands in the class wars, and much of her humor arises in the fine distinctions of aristocratic manners and speech. Still, there's an inimitable tart sweetness to these stories of true love and its pallid imitators, making them perfect snapshots of a vanished world. --Barrie Trinkle --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

The Evil Style Queen: The Mitford Sisters The Evil Style Queen Misanthropic views on this and that from the deepest German backwaters "I have a crown and a headscarf and no hangups about wearing either!" Friday, January 11, 2008 The Mitford Sisters Here I give you a whiff of the six Mitford sisters, five of which came to either prominence or notoriety and thus became part of 20th century history: The parents of the Mitford sisters, David Bertram Ogilvy Freeman-Mitford, 2nd Baron Redesdale and his wife Sydney Bowles, were described as handsome, eccentric, cold and remote. The Mitford children (six girls and a boy) grew up in relatively moderate circumstances deep in rural Oxfordshire. The parents didn't believe in education for girls, specifically not in formal schools. Lady Redesdale run a chicken farm, the return of which was duly invested in her daughters' scant education. The children were brought up by a nanny who, as it happens so often in English upper-class families, provided their only stability and warmth. A string of hapless governesses was employed to convey what little knowledge the parents thought girls needed.

Contact with other children was very limited because Lord and Lady Redesdale were of the opinion that this might overexcite the girls. According to Jessica Mitford, Lord Redesdale wouldn't receive any "outsiders" such as "Huns", "Frogs", Americans, Africans and any other "foreigners", which included other people's children, most friends of the girls and almost all young men. An exception was made for some (but by no means all) relatives and some choice red-faced and tweed-clad neighbours. This cruel and eccentric environment was mirrored by the girls from an early age. Merciless bullying among them was rampant, an "art" at which specifically the oldest sister Nancy excelled, a precocious sign of her later whip-lash tongue, for which she became famous as a writer. The parents split up after more than 35 years of marriage over the crucial question whether Adolf Hitler would be welcome as a son-in-law and whether a German invasion was appreciated or not. Lord Redesdale was against, his wife all for it.

Exasperated, he left her and moved to the tiny Scottish island of Inch Kenneth near Mull, about the only bit of estate that had remained in the family, and from where he returned only after the war. Nancy (1904 – 1973), the first born, became a celebrated writer, biographer and novelist. No lesser co-brain than Evelyn Waugh called her "an agitator - agitatrix, agitateuse? - of genius". Nancy and Peter Rodd's wedding. Her best known novels are the autobiographical The Pursuit of Love (1945) and Love in a Cold Climate (1949). I specifically enjoyed The Blessing (1951), in which the devious child of a broken-down Anglo-French aristocratic marriage plots to prevent a reconciliation between his parents, which convincingly undermines the politically correct belief that children are little innocents who never recognise that their bread is sometimes more thickly buttered on the separation side. Nancy's famous line (I quote from memory): "I like children. Specifically when the cry, because then somebody comes and takes them away" fits this bill perfectly.

She edited the extremely witty and funny Noblesse Oblige (1956), a delightfully eccentric analysis of aristocracy, Englishness and language. Here, she famously helped to originate the famous 'U', or upper-class, and 'non-U' classification of linguistic usage and behaviour, all with an amusing tongue-in-cheek twist. Nancy 1969. In private matters she was less successful. In 1933, after a long but doomed engagement to homosexual Scottish aristocrat Hamish St Clair-Erskine, whom, so she erroneously thought, she would be able to lead to and keep on the straight and narrow, she married The Hon. Peter Rodd, the youngest son of the 1st Baron Rennell. The marriage to the cold and self-centred Rodd was not a success. Nancy and Peter Rodd, then separated for many years, divorced in 1958. At the end of WWII, Nancy moved to Paris, partly to be near French soldier and politician Colonel Gaston Palewski (Charles de Gaulle's Chief of Staff), with whom she had had an affair in London during the war.

The largely one-sided thing lasted fitfully and ended unhappily when Palewski married somebody else in 1969. Nancy Mitford died of Leukaemia in 1973. The second Mitford child was Pamela (1907 – 1994). She was the only one of the sisters to remain in comparative obscurity. A dedicated country- and horsewomen, docile Pamela married a man as unlikely as the research spectroscopist and Oxford professor Derek Jackson. Enormously rich in his own right (he was, for example, a co-owner of the rag The News of the World), he had, among other things, devised the concept of the tin foil strips, which, dropped over the bombing target, rendered the German air raid defences inoperative. However, he served not just behind the scenes but rose to Wing Commander in the rank of Lieutenant Colonel during the war. Pamela's and Derek's mutual interest had been horses and dogs, which remained the case even after they divorced. Next was the only boy, Thomas (1909 – 1945). Educated at Eton, Thomas died without issue.

He was killed in the war in Burma through the bullet of a Japanese sniper. The title eventually went to Lord Redesdale's brother. Diana (1910 – 2003) was the third daughter. The opinions whether she or Deborah was the most beautiful of the girls differ. Diana Mitford married Bryan Guinness, scion of the immensely rich aristocratic beer-dynasty and heir to the title of Lord Moyne, when she was 19. When she was 22, she took her two children, left her husband and "nailed (her) colours to the mast" of the heavily married (to Cynthia, daughter of the former Viceroy of India, Lord Curzon) British Fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley, 14 years her senior. Mosley never intended to leave his loyal and long-suffering wife and his idea of two "wives" shocked even the debauched social circles in which he and Diana were moving. Sir Oswald's wife conveniently died in May 1933 and grief-stricken Oswald promptly embarked on an affair with his youngest sister-in-law, whereupon Diana went to Germany, taking Unity with her.

While there, they attended the first Nürnberg party rally and returned again for the second rally the next year. Unity introduced Diana to Hitler in March 1935. They were his guests at the 1935 rally and, in 1936, Hitler provided a Mercedes-Benz to chauffeur Diana to the Berlin Olympic Games. She continued to be Mosley's public mistress despite his endless affairs with other women. 1935, Diana was divorced from Bryan Guinness, who had pleaded guilty and provided "evidence" of his "adultery", as a man of his class was bound to do. In 1936, Mosley and Diana were married in a clandestine civil ceremony in Berlin, with Hitler and Goebbels attending. They made the marriage publicly known only after their first child was born in 1938. During WWII, she and Mosley were interned at London's Holloway Prison under, thanks to Winston Churchill, relatively comfortable circumstances, their two small children went to live with Diana's sister Pamela Jackson. 1943, after two years, they were both released on grounds of Sir Oswald's health and placed under house arrest until the end of the war.

Diana remained married to Mosley - and a dedicated Nazi - until the end. She wrote two books of memoirs, A Life of Contrasts (1977), and Loved Ones (1985), as well as a biography of the Duchess of Windsor, whom she had befriended when they were neighbours in post-war Paris where she and Mosley went to live. Diana Mitford (The Honourable Lady Mosley) died at the age of 93 as one of the many elderly victims of the heat wave that struck Europe in summer 2003 and with which the French had been unable to cope. Unity (left) and Diana (right), at the September 1937 Nürnberg Nazi Party rally. The next in line, Unity (1914 – 1948), is, to me, the least interesting, most one-dimensional of the sisters, although she was (and still is) the most notorious one. Plainly obnoxious and fairly dim, she always got her way by sheer disagreeableness and even managed to unnerve her battleaxe of a father by staring him down.

Different from her sisters', her eccentricity and obstinacy was not the means to an end or to express creativity, but its own reward. She loved to hurt and to wind people up for hurting's and winding up's sake. It started with releasing her pet rat in ballrooms as a deb and ended with becoming the world's first "polit groupie" to one of the nastiest dictators in history. At almost six foot, she was impressive at best, frightening at worst. (The accounts of her attractiveness differ considerably.) One of the girls who did the season with her described her as "cold because she'd never known love", but then, that would have applied to her sisters as well. Unity's season had, not too surprisingly, ended without an engagement in sight and, bored, she did exactly what her parents had told her not to do, namely to see her ostracised sister Diana. There she met Oswald Mosley and fell for him and his cause hook, line and sinker and when she expressed the wish to learn German, her unsuspecting parents, delighted and relieved that the notoriously useless Unity had finally expressed interest in something, let her travel to Munich. That was in 1933 and the rest is history.

She pursued Hitler and followed him like a dog until he finally took notice of her. Hitler, ever the petty-bourgeois, adored the fact that a girl from an English upper-class family should fancy him and indulged her and her every whim, together with, but not limited to, the gift of a lovely flat in Munich (char included) out of which a Jewish family had been thrown. Hitler's entourage unanimously hated her, her insolence and airs and graces and her potential influence. A telling of information informs us that she had to be admonished by an older woman friend that she was not to make fun of and be rude to Himmler's wife. Living in Germany, mainly in Berlin and Munich, on and off from 1933 to the outbreak of WWII, she met at home everything from raised eyebrows to stern disapproval, but only finally burnt her bridges when she sided publicly with Julius Streicher. Asked by a German diplomat's wife why she was getting involved with people like Streicher and his ilk Unity replied: "They help me get what I want", which sums up nicely her attitude towards life and humankind in general. Three epithets describe Unity best: Nasty, nasty and nasty.

When Britain declared war on Germany in September 1939 and all Britons were forced to leave the country, Unity, rid of her role and her purpose in life, did the only plausible thing and attempted suicide. She shot herself in the head, but only suffered serious brain damage. She was returned to England, all German hospital bills paid for by Hitler, where doctors decided it was too dangerous to remove the bullet, and she eventually died at the age of 33 of meningitis caused by the swelling around the projectile. Jessica and Esmond Romilly in their bar in Miami (top). Jessica and Bob Treuhaft at a book presentation in the Seventies (below). The next sister, Jessica (1917 – 1996), eloped to Spain at the age of 19 with 18 year old Spanish Civil War veteran Esmond Romilly, her second cousin and a nephew of Winston Churchill. Educated at Wellington, Esmond was a journalist who wrote two autobiographies before he was 21 and had attracted media attention as Churchill's 'red nephew'. In Spain he worked as a reporter, along with his friend Philip Toynbee, Arnold Toynbee's son.

He and Toynbee collaborated on a journalistic account of the Spanish Civil War. Later, Toynbee wrote Esmond's biography Friends Apart. Jessica's and Edmond's spitting mad parents did everything, even involving the Royal Navy who sent a destroyer, to make still under age Jessica return to England and only her announcement that she was pregnant made them relent. The young couple was allowed to marry at the British Consulate in Bayonne, both heavily disapproving mothers in attendance. Jessica never saw her father again, who had cut all bonds and disowned her. He even refused on his deathbed (1958) to see her. Later, the Romillys settled for a brief while in Miami and opened a bar. When Britain declared war on Germany, Esmond Romilly went to Canada to volunteer. He served in the Royal Canadian Air Force and was shot down over the North Sea in 1941 after a bombing raid over Nazi Germany. He was 23. The news of his death were broken to Jessica by Winston Churchill personally. Jessica went on to live in the USA, took on odd office jobs and worked hard for her living. She married the Harvard-educated lawyer and notorious leftist activist Robert Treuhaft.

Lord Redesdale is said to have had one of his legendary earth-shattering tantrums when he learned of the existence of a new son-in-law who was both, a Communist and a Jew. Later, she pursued an extremely successful career as an investigative writer. Carl Bernstein, who wrote the epilogue to Jessica's book The Gentle Art of Muckraking, conceded that her research skills were far above his. Her autobiography Hons and Rebels, which appeared 1960 (and which I haven't read) got much acclaim and throws light on her family and upbringing. Deborah and Andrew Cavendish's wedding. The youngest sister, Deborah (born 1920), married Lord Andrew Cavendish, second son of the 10th Duke of Devonshire, when they both were 21. At that time, Andrew was not expected to inherit the title. Because his older brother William (who was engaged to be married to Kathleen Kennedy, sister of JFK), was killed in combat in 1944, Andrew became Marquess of Hartington and 11th Duke of Devonshire after his father's death in 1950. Deborah Duchess of Devonshire never put a foot wrong.

She was considered the most perfect of all Duchesses of Devonshire. There had been ten before her. Deborah Mitford by Pietro Annigoni She has been the public face of Chatsworth House, the Devonshires' seat in Derbyshire, for many decades and remains so in her widowhood. She has written several books about Chatsworth and played a key role in the restoration of the house, the improvement of the garden, the development of commercial activities such as the Chatsworth Farm Shop (a business that employs a hundred people), and Chatsworth's other business operations. She has even been known to man the ticket office herself if the need arose. She became the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire in 2004 upon the death of her husband when her son inherited the title. Andrew and Deborah had been married for 63 years. Deborah, consecutively The Honourable Deborah Freeman-Mitford, Lady Andrew Cavendish, Marchioness of Hartington, Duchess of Devonshire and Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, is the last surviving one of the famous Mitford sisters. As all women, with the exception of Pamela, led very public lives, there are plenty of pictures around.

To me, the most captivating ones are those of the old women, which clearly show how life had treated them – and they life. There is, of course, plenty of information on the Mitfords in the Internet . For those with a deeper interest in the history of the 20th century from this particular angle, Nancy's and Jessica's autobiographical books are certainly worth reading, as are, I am sure, if one can stomach it, Diana's. Jessica, Deborah and Pamela. In the background Alexander Mosley (son of Diana) and Alexander's wife Charlotte, Editor of 'The Nancy Mitford Diaries' at a book launch party held at The Reform Club on the 23rd of September 1993. I used apart from some of the above mentioned material a German book Die Mitford Sisters by Karlheinz Schädlich, Düsseldorf 1990, which contains a lot of information (plus some of the pictures shown here), but quite a few irritating errors and mistakes as well. Schädlich quotes extensively David Pryce-Jones, Unity Mitford. A Quest, London 1978.

Charlotte Mosley (Diana's daughter-in-law) wrote: A Talent to Annoy, Essays, Journalism, and Reviews by Nancy Mitford, London 1960. Posted by Evil Style Queen at 13:49 Nancy Mitford | Penguin Books Australia books Nancy Mitford was born in London on November 28 1904, daughter of the second Baron Redesdale, and the eldest of six girls. Her sisters included Lady Diana Mosley; Deborah, Duchess of Devonshire and Jessica, who immortalised the Mitford family in her autobiography Hons and Rebels. The Mitford sisters came of age during the Roaring Twenties and wartime in London, and were well known for their beauty, upper-class bohemianism or political allegiances. Nancy contributed columns to The Lady and the Sunday Times, as well as writing a series of popular novels including The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate, which detailed the high-society affairs of the six Radlett sisters. While working in London during the Blitz, Nancy met and fell in love with Gaston Palewski, General de Gaulle's chief of staff, and eventually moved to Paris to be near him.

In the 1950s she began writing historical biographies - her life of Louis XIV, The Sun King, became an international bestseller. Nancy completed her last book, Frederick the Great, before she died of Hodgkin's disease on 30 June 1973. Nancy Mitford (1904-1973) was born in London, the eldest child of the second Baron Redesdale. Her childhood in a large, remote country house with her five sisters and one brother is recounted in the early chapters of The Pursuit of Love (1945), which, according to Mitford, is largely autobiographical. Apart from being taught to ride and speak French, Nancy Mitford always claimed she never received a proper education. She started writing before her marriage in 1932 in order 'to relieve the boredom of the intervals between recreations established by the social conventions of her world' and had written four novels before the success of The Pursuit of Love in 1945. After the war she moved to Paris and she spent the rest of her life in France.

She followed The Pursuit of Love with Love in a Cold Climate (1949), The Blessing (1951) and Don't Tell Alfred (1960). She also wrote four works of biography: Madame de Pompadour, first published to great acclaim in 1954, Voltaire in Love, The Sun King and Frederick the Great. As well as being a novelist and biographer she also translated Madame de Lafayette's classic novel, La Princesse de Cléves, into English, and edited Noblesse Oblige, a collection of essays concerned with the behaviour of the English aristocracy and the idea of 'U' and 'non-U'. Nancy Mitford was awarded the CBE in 1972.

BOOK REVIEW / Pursuit of bloody-minded charm: 'Love From Nancy: The Letters of Nancy Mitford' - Ed Charlotte Mosley: Hodder & Stoughton, 20 pounds | The Independent BOOK REVIEW / Pursuit of bloody-minded charm: 'Love From Nancy: The Letters of Nancy Mitford' - Ed Charlotte Mosley: Hodder & Stoughton, 20 pounds Friday 1 October 1993 23:02 BST Click to follow The Independent Culture NANCY MITFORD seemed like a creature of another time, long before her death in 1973. She 'belonged to the late Twenties, that period now deader than the dodo,' she wrote of the Bolter in The Pursuit of Love. And a similar charge could be levelled at Nancy herself. That sense she had of nothing interesting being in front of her gave her charm a closed, brittle air. You have to be prepared to close your eyes, to dive backwards, to find any joy in the fairytale romance and elitist humour of her work. Look at it too closely, and it breaks down into the cold destructiveness of snobbery.

Accept it, and it is a wonderful fantasy, rich in escapist possibilities. Accept, for a start, the absolute glamour of the set of Mitford sisters, who seemed able to write their own destinies in their childhood and never deviate from them: Diana, the beauty; Unity, the fascist who became an intimate of Hitler's; Nancy, the writer; Jessica, the communist who ran away to the Spanish Civil War; Deborah, the Duchess; and Pamela, who 'wanted to be a horse'. If you know anything about them, from their memoirs, or from Nancy's best-loved and most autobiographical works, The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate, reading these letters is like revisiting a comfortable, well-worn house. We go to a miserable refugee camp for Spaniards in 1939, and meet the British playboys turned relief workers, just as Linda did in The Pursuit of Love; we hear of Jessica amusing children of the neighbourhood with tales of how babies are born, just as in Hons and Rebels; we meet the glamorous ex- ambassadress to Paris, just as in Don't Tell Alfred, only here she is called Lady Diana Cooper.

Its familiarity doesn't make it, necessarily, a comfortable world. In her novels Nancy mastered her life, making everyone who was different or difficult into figures of mirth, moving only among the aristocracy, and infusing the world with a spirit of lazy, delightful romance. In The Pursuit of Love, particularly, Linda wanders from adolescent infatuation with a rich banker, to a brief interlude with the idealistic Christian, to true love in Paris with Fabrice, Duc de Sauveterre. Nancy was quite happy for much of this to be taken as autobiography, often referrring to her own French lover as Fabrice, and writing: 'Everybody seems to think every word literally of the book is true. Nancy Cunard is here and Victor said to me 'she gives a much more gloomy account of Paris than you do, but then of course nobody took a flat for her or gave her all those fur coats.' ' Unfortunately, nobody did that for Nancy either.

She went from an unrequited love for a homosexual, Hamish St Clair-Erskine, which engagement was viciously broken off; to a disastrous marriage with Peter Rodd, who was incapable of providing any security or love; to a life-long adoration of Gaston Palewski. Although they were sexual and intellectual companions, he never married Nancy, and in fact told her about his impending marriage to another, richer and younger, woman at about the same time as she discovered she had cancer, when she was 64. Despite all the elegant brio of her style, Nancy's letters reflect her deep dissatisfaction with the unyielding stuff of reality. Real arguments crop up with her fanatically political sisters and her hazy, unloving mother; financial crises as her husband spent his way through her earnings; despair over her failed love affairs; even a couple of suicide attempts are mentioned, all shockingly harsh to those of us accustomed to her bubbling fiction. But despite the endless struggle between fantasy and hard knocks, this volume of letters has the smooth shape and emotional crescendo of a fictional work. Nancy's early letters, like her early books, are excessively childish, steeped in the slang and party culture of the Twenties.

Her mature letters, like the books of her mature years, are a delight, full of the sparks of an abrasive and entertaining wit, refreshingly free from politeness. 'Peter Brook said R Morley's great fault is he is so disloyal & I replied well I'm very disloyal myself so it's not a thing I ever mind at all,' she once wrote, and, refusing to see a friend who had annoyed her: 'You haven't given offence, you have given an excuse.' Nancy suffered nearly five years of constant agony before her death in 1973, but her last letters reach a piquancy, in which the practised wit fights with a true depth of emotion, that is bettered nowhere else in her work. Who but Nancy Mitford could write on her deathbed: 'It's very curious, dying, and would have many a drole amusing & charming side were it not for the pain . . .' As Pascal said, the last act is always bloody, no matter how charming the rest of the play. But Nancy Mitford kept up the charm through all the bloodiness.

Her final letter, a gut-wrenching scream of pain addressed to Palewski, ends with a last wave of elegant generosity: 'Hassan (her servant) has been too wonderful.' More about: Masterpiece Theatre | Love in a Cold Climate | Links and Bibliography Love in a Cold Climate BBC Learning: The Bookcase: Love in a Cold Climate This interactive resource from BBC Learning features a literary guide to The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate: the social setting, based on interviews with Mitford biographers and historians, covers the dynamics of the Mitford family, their relationships and education, as well as the British aristocracy of the 1920s and 1930s and how the class was affected by politics and war; a character tree; a section about the television adaptation, featuring cast and location information, profiles of the actors, and interviews with the crew; and the Mitfords, a biographical essay on Nancy Mitford and the Mitford family, and a family tree (including all six sisters and their brother).

Jessica Mitford Memorial Site The memorial site for Jessica Mitford (nicknamed Decca) includes a photo gallery, a collection of articles and obituaries, information about her recording career, and an account of her "last request." The section entitled Morticians provides a glimpse at the funeral industry's reaction to her crusade against the American death industry, and under the Guests heading you'll find tributes from her acquaintances and researchers. Decca The Albion Monitor presents this feature on Jessica "Decca" Mitford. The two shorter essays, "A Queen with no Apparent Heir" and "There is a Moral to it All," respectively discuss the lack of modern muckrakers and Decca's "midlife reappraisal" in terms of a Levinsonian analysis. The longer biographical essay, "Decca," includes inline links to many other articles and essays related to Decca and her family. Morally Handicapped, by Brooke Allen Diana Mitford's life and loves -- Sir Oswald Mosley and fascism -- are well-summarized in Brooke Allen's review of Jan Dalley's biography Diana Mosley.

The article appeared in the April 2000 edition of The New Criterion, a monthly review of the arts and intellectual life. Unity and Diana: Handmaidens of the Reich Unity was conceived near Swastika, Ontario before the word had political connotations, and grew to be Hitler's great friend and confidante. Diana was a family outcast, a divorceé who married her lover, Oswald Mosley, the leader of the British Union of Fascists, in Goebbel's house. Staunch supporters of the Nazi party, the declaration of war would have dramatic consequences for the two English sisters -- especially for Unity. In this essay from The Albion Monitor, their sister Jessica, whose own political views were the polemic opposite of fascism, shares some bittersweet memories of the sisters' rivalry yet fondness for each other. Debrett's -- Over Two Centuries of British Tradition A well-recognized and respected authority on the British way of life, Debrett's offers links to modern etiquette tips, the correct forms of addressing royals, an extensive section on royal connections featuring biographic profiles, a tour of royal Britain, and a complete list of those stores and businesses approved by the Crown. Planning a trip to the UK?

See which hotels and restaurants Debrett's recommends, and check the events calendar by season. Many other services are subscription-based. back to top Bibliography Mitford, Nancy. A Talent to Annoy: Essays, Articles, and Reviews, 1929-1968. Ed. Charlotte Mosley. London: H. Hamilton, 1986. ---. The Letters of Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh. Ed. Charlotte Mosley. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1996. The correspondence of the English socialite and the English satirist shows their talent for insult, caricature and disguised affection. ---. Love from Nancy: The Letters of Nancy Mitford. Ed. Charlotte Mosley. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1993. ---. Noblesse Oblige: An Enquiry into the Identifiable Characteristics of the English Aristocracy. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1974. ---. The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate: Two Novels. New York: Vintage Books, 2001. Mitford, Jessica. The American Way of Death Revisited.

New York: Vintage Books, 2000. The Mitford girl who outshone her sisters - Telegraph The Mitford girl who outshone her sisters The death of the Duchess of Devonshire brings back fond memories of meeting all four Mitford sisters The Dowager Duchess of Devonshire who died on September 24 2014 at the age of 94 Photo: Bassano Comments When, in the early Nineties, I began reporting in this column on the sudden deluge of new red tape then engulfing British business, one of my earliest and most enthusiastic supporters was that remarkable woman, the Duchess of Devonshire, who last week rightly won such fulsome tributes when she died at the age of 94. I first met her 51 years ago at a family wedding at Chatsworth, when I had the memorable treat of an evening with four of the legendary Mitford sisters, including the somewhat unnerving Diana Mosley and the novelist Nancy, whose thinly disguised picture of her family in The Pursuit of Love, much to the disapproval of my stern Victorian grandmother, I had eagerly devoured when I was 13.

Years later, after we had exchanged merry correspondence on the horrors being inflicted by mad officials on cheesemakers, rural abattoirs and every part of British agriculture, I took my family for a delightful lunch with her and her husband at Chatsworth. I amazed her by saying that I had for some years lived in the same small block of flats in London as her wonderfully eccentric uncle, Commander Geoffrey Bowles, who was the inspiration for the character Captain Davey Warbeck in The Pursuit of Love. I showed the Duchess a book her uncle had given me called Writings of a Rebel, which he had published at the end of the Second World War. In it, inter alia, he had inveighed against how our parliamentary democracy was giving way to the rule of anonymous officials. With remarkable prescience, he wrote of how “the Minister” may seem to the world “all-powerful”. But in truth he is merely “the visible puppet”, manipulated by “the hidden hand of the bureaucrat who pulls his strings from behind the scenes”. How truer this is today than it was then.

Two years ago I was kept entertained on a flight to Australia by her autobiography, Wait For Me, so called because of her constant plaintive cry as a small girl when, on family walks, her pudgy little legs made it hard to keep up with her older sisters. Eventually, of course, in all her many-sided contributions to the life of this country, she overtook them all. And, as with all really good people, any contact with her always left one feeling enlarged and very much more alive. Lightweights of the BBC

Question: Which of the Mitford sisters wrote the semi- autobiography 'Pursuit Of Love'?
Answer: NANCY