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Mrs Guinness: The Rise and Fall of Diana Mitford, the Thirties Socialite
Before Diana Mitford's disgrace as a social pariah, she was a celebrated member of the Bright Young Things, moving at the centre of 1920s and '30s London high society. She was a muse to Helleu painted her, James Lees-Milne worshipped her, Evelyn Waugh dedicated a book to her and Winston Churchill nicknamed her 'Dina-mite'. As the young wife of Bryan Guinness, heir to the Guinness brewing empire, she lived a gilded life until fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley turned her head. Unpublished letters, diaries and archives bring an unknown Diana to life, creating a portrait of a beautiful woman whose charm and personality enthralled all who met her, but the discourse of her life would ultimately act as a cautionary tale. This groundbreaking biography reveals the woman behind the myth.
225 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 2, 2015
27 people are currently reading
123 people want to read
About the author
Lyndsy Spence
20 books47 followersWelcome to my Goodreads profile!
I am the author of The Mitford Girls' Guide to Life (The History Press, 2013); Mrs Guinness: The Rise and Fall of Diana Mitford (The History Press, 2015); Margaret Lockwood: Queen of the Silver Screen (Fantom Films, 2016); The Mistress of Mayfair: Men, Money and the Marriage of Doris Delevingne (The History Press, 2016). I also edit and produce The Mitford Society annual.
Aside from writing books, I have dabbled in screenwriting. In 2012 I co-wrote The Flower Girl, a short film directed by Emmy Award winner Nick Nanton and shot on location in L.A. My biopic of Vivien Leigh is in development with Ariana Entertainment, and I am currently developing and co-writing a television series based during WWI.
I have written for mainstream newspapers and magazines including Social & Personal, The Lady, Vintage Life, and BBC News Magazine. I also review books for The Lady.
I am the author of The Mitford Girls' Guide to Life (The History Press, 2013); Mrs Guinness: The Rise and Fall of Diana Mitford (The History Press, 2015); Margaret Lockwood: Queen of the Silver Screen (Fantom Films, 2016); The Mistress of Mayfair: Men, Money and the Marriage of Doris Delevingne (The History Press, 2016). I also edit and produce The Mitford Society annual.
Aside from writing books, I have dabbled in screenwriting. In 2012 I co-wrote The Flower Girl, a short film directed by Emmy Award winner Nick Nanton and shot on location in L.A. My biopic of Vivien Leigh is in development with Ariana Entertainment, and I am currently developing and co-writing a television series based during WWI.
I have written for mainstream newspapers and magazines including Social & Personal, The Lady, Vintage Life, and BBC News Magazine. I also review books for The Lady.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
September 23, 2019
Slow start and a rushed ending. The middle was reasonably interesting, with some new information (new to me, anyway) about her actual marriage to Bryan Guinness. Diana doesn't emerge with much credit for her treatment of the poor man, but then no one in this book does for anything. Diana herself is so egotistical that she literally sucks the life out of everyone in her path, and Spence seems to follow her lead. The sisters are kept firmly offstage, with no real depth in Spence's portrayal of either them or Farve and Muv. Tom Mitford seems to be universally accepted by biographers of the family as a lost cause, but I would have liked more information as to why Nancy betrayed her, or even Diana's reaction to Wigs on the Green. Spence assumes that the reader is aware of the larger Mitford story. That's fine, but it reduces the overall value of this book to a few chapters in a larger context, not a stand-alone account of an intelligent woman's decline and fall. Even the title is a bit problematic. Diana Mitford Guinness Mosley considered her life "perfect heaven", to employ a Mitford phrase. She went after Sir Oswald with full knowledge of what it meant for her future in English society, and never regretted it. I can't imagine why, as he was a serial philanderer before, after and during the long marriage. Diana had to follow him into exile, and spent the rest of her life ruthlessly avoiding coming to terms with the results of fascism. Yes, she was funny. All the Mitfords were. But in terms of Diana's character, I'm with Decca.
April 15, 2015
Diana Mitford is a fascinating, unforgettable character, skilfully brought to life by Lyndsy Spence in a new biography. The book is well researched, entertaining and informative, drawing on never-before published letters, diaries and archives to shed fresh insight on this most controversial of the Mitford sisters. I was particularly impressed by Spence’s balanced view of her subject. She neither fawns over Diana, nor vilifies her, but gets to the heart of this central paradox: Diana was a woman of exceptional gifts, intelligent, beautiful and charming, yet her life ultimately turned out to be a cautionary tale.
November 19, 2019
I've always been fascinated by the Mitfords and this book is an excellent addition to the body of work that has been written about them.
May 4, 2015
Just ok. Good description of her relationship with Hitler and her marriages. Awful on her time in prison and epilogue.
Non existent on the social pariah bit - from this account she didn't become one!
Non existent on the social pariah bit - from this account she didn't become one!
February 14, 2016
Didn't tell me anything new and nothing about the social mores of the day that ostracised Diana Mitford.
Read
April 10, 2025In many memoirs and biographies of the Mitford sisters, Diana cuts a glamorous, glimmering figure whose descent into fascism was as inexplicable as it was catastrophic. The tone is often: "But she was so charming and warm, how could someone so nice have harbored such heinous views?"
Spence bursts this bubble pretty effectively.
She paints Diana Mitford as a vapid, sometimes callous society mean girl whose famed generosity and loyalty to her friends - some of whom were, gasp!, even gay! - were little more than far-right hypocrisy, of the kind that is all too familiar to the contemporary reader.
Moreover, she does it seemingly inadvertently, which makes it all the more convincing, like the subject's true character can't help coming through even when the author herself wants to be sympathetic.
Mitford and her second husband, Sir Oswald Mosley — shown here to be an incompetent self-aggrandizing loser even outside of his disgusting politics — even fit pretty neatly into the dynamic of the puffed-up fascist grifter and his inexplicably loyal Serena Joy of a girlfriend.
In that sense, it's both interesting and frustrating to observe such a dynamic with the gift of historical hindsight.
And while I count the focus on the height of Mitford's notoriety in the 1930s and 40s among the book's virtues (along with its depiction of the devastating effect of restrictive early 20th century gender roles and being raised by the 1900s equivalent of off-grid anti-vaxxers), I couldn't help wishing for just a bit more insight into the post-war years.
Spence's authorial voice sometimes also seems to, as my friend put it, "leave the fash too much leeway", although I do believe that this is simply because the book was published in 2015, when the simple truth of Nazis=bad went without saying, and the reader would have found the fascist tendencies of the British upper classes during WWII more surprising than their compatriots' efforts to oppose them.
However, it doesn't help that many lines from other biographies (De Courcy) and Mitford's own writings appear to be lifted without too much editorial input, which occasionally blurs the lines between the author's and the subject's perspectives.
In fact, editorial lapses don't stop there. The final third especially is plagued by tautological sentences, and some sentences get repeated almost verbatim a page or two after they first appear.
In spite of all this, all in all, this is an easy and compelling read.
Spence bursts this bubble pretty effectively.
She paints Diana Mitford as a vapid, sometimes callous society mean girl whose famed generosity and loyalty to her friends - some of whom were, gasp!, even gay! - were little more than far-right hypocrisy, of the kind that is all too familiar to the contemporary reader.
Moreover, she does it seemingly inadvertently, which makes it all the more convincing, like the subject's true character can't help coming through even when the author herself wants to be sympathetic.
Mitford and her second husband, Sir Oswald Mosley — shown here to be an incompetent self-aggrandizing loser even outside of his disgusting politics — even fit pretty neatly into the dynamic of the puffed-up fascist grifter and his inexplicably loyal Serena Joy of a girlfriend.
In that sense, it's both interesting and frustrating to observe such a dynamic with the gift of historical hindsight.
And while I count the focus on the height of Mitford's notoriety in the 1930s and 40s among the book's virtues (along with its depiction of the devastating effect of restrictive early 20th century gender roles and being raised by the 1900s equivalent of off-grid anti-vaxxers), I couldn't help wishing for just a bit more insight into the post-war years.
Spence's authorial voice sometimes also seems to, as my friend put it, "leave the fash too much leeway", although I do believe that this is simply because the book was published in 2015, when the simple truth of Nazis=bad went without saying, and the reader would have found the fascist tendencies of the British upper classes during WWII more surprising than their compatriots' efforts to oppose them.
However, it doesn't help that many lines from other biographies (De Courcy) and Mitford's own writings appear to be lifted without too much editorial input, which occasionally blurs the lines between the author's and the subject's perspectives.
In fact, editorial lapses don't stop there. The final third especially is plagued by tautological sentences, and some sentences get repeated almost verbatim a page or two after they first appear.
In spite of all this, all in all, this is an easy and compelling read.
May 17, 2022
3.75 rounded up 🙃
May 7, 2024
[5 Jun 2018] An interesting and informative read.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews