De zes freules: de geschiedenis van de zussen Mitford

by Laura Thompson, Arnout van Cruyningen (Translator)

'De zes freules' van Laura Thompson is het verhaal van de zussen Mitford, zes dochters uit een oude Engelse adellijke familie. Ze schitterden op de debutantenbals in het interbellum. Allemaal waren ze voorbestemd om een goed huwelijk te sluiten. Maar het liep heel anders.

Nancy werd bestsellerauteur, en beschreef de gebruiken van haar stand. Pamela had een relatie met John Betjeman, hield van het landleven en werd kippenfokker. Diana was fascist en trouwde met Oswald Mosley, de leider van de Britse fascistenpartij. Unity was fan van Hitler en schoot zichzelf door het hoofd toen Groot-Brittannië de oorlog verklaarde aan Duitsland. Daarna bleef ze nog vier jaar in leven. Jessica was lid van de Amerikaanse communistische partij. Deborah trouwde en werd de hertogin van Devonshire. Maar stiekem was ze idolaat van Elvis Presley en had ze haar studeerkamer volhangen met plaatjes van the king.

Dit boek is een verzameling onwaarschijnlijke, maar waargebeurde verhalen. Laura Thompson beschrijft de rol van de elite, op een moment in de geschiedenis dat de adel haar traditionele rol verloor. Alle ideologieën van de twintigste eeuw komen voorbij in deze biografie, die leest als een roman. Met fotokatern.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, History, Audiobook, Biography Memoir, British Literature, Historical

416 pages, Paperback

First published September 30, 2015

About the author

Please note: Laura Thompson's account is mistakenly merged with another author's account by the same name. Goodreads Librarians are working to solve the issue.

Laura Thompson writes about life - and is unapologetic in what she captures. She is a sexual assault survivor, has navigated near death traumas with her daughters' medical issues, and possesses the ability to capture what is true, honest, and worthy.

True to form, her writing will resonate powerfully with other survivors and with anyone who knows a survivor - because she embodies the word.

Thompson has worked in nonprofit administration for seven years. She and her husband, Edward, have three children: identical twin daughters, Jane and Claire, and son, Stephen. They reside in the Lowcountry of Charleston, SC.

Reviews

[Hanneke · Rating 4 out of 5]

A pretty remarkable biography of the notorious Mitford girls. What made this biography so interesting is the description of the mood and sense of separation that divided life of the highest classes in England from the rest of the population in the interbellum, especially in the middle ‘30’s. I was amazed to read that it was quite common for the British higher classes to express a certain liking for the fascist cause in Germany. Many a nobleman called Hitler affectionately ‘the Hun’. Hitler was considered a strong leader and many found it regretful that England lacked such a strong man to arrange, for example, for a substantial reduction of the unemployed as Hitler was doing in Germany. I had to think of the duke in ‘The Remains of the Day’ of Ishiguri. I never realised that this duke was not an exception to the rule, as there are more examples, such as the abdicated King Edward and his wife Wallis Simpson, who were both great friends of Hitler and his clique. This sentiment of admiration to the German cause prevailed even to just before the official declaration of war.

Now on to the Mitford family, this was exactly the sentiment of the parents of the Mitford girls. Mother Sydney Mitford was a champion of the fascist cause and even a good friend of Hitler. She travelled to Germany often, usually taking with her a few of the girls. Eventually, all the girls had met Hitler personally one time or another, had tea parties at his house and were invited to all sorts of Nazi manifestations, like the notorious Nazi Party Day in Nuremburg, opening of the Olympic Games in Berlin and the annual Wagner festivals. It is a very strange coincidence that the Mitford family was related to the Churchill family. Mother Sydney was a sister of Clementine, wife of Churchill, and they were very close. Incredible to realise that the Mitfords were, consequently, closely in contact with Churchill as well as Hitler.

As was the normal situation for children of the highest classes in England, children were not attending schools, but educated at home. Strange to think that Nancy, who became a very celebrated novelist, had only one year of formal education. Still, the Mitford girls were very passionate about their separate ideas. So let me shortly introduce you to the girls. Two girls were fanatical fascists, t.w. the beautiful Diana and the rather goofy Unity (second name: Valkyrie!). Unity even moved to Munich to be close to Hitler and was great friends with him. Then there was Jessica, who became a staunch communist and moved to America. Pamela was leaning towards the fascist cause, but was otherwise quiet compared to their sisters. The last sister was Deborah, a great beauty as well who married the Duke of Devonshire and lived on one of the most magnificent estates of Britain. Nancy, the novelist, was the sensible one and moved to France after the war. She was never involved in politics, in contrast to Diana who divorced her husband Guinness (yes, he of the beer emporium) and married Sir Oswald Mosley, the leader of the Fascist Party of Britain, a fanatical man in a fascist uniform and womanizer par excellence. Idiotic move of Diana, but she was passionate about Mosley and stayed with him until the day he died. During the war, she and Mosley were imprisonned for three years which, however, did not change their convictions.

I will not further elaborate on the ties between the sisters throughout their lives, but it makes interesting reading. I suspect it must have been pretty nerve wrecking to meet them all in a single room and spend a few hours with them, what with the secret coded private language they used with each other! People comment on that and even one co-worker of Nancy resigned from her job because she could not stand to listen to her voice!

To sum it up, I thoroughly liked the biography even if the entertainment value was a bit too much sometimes!

[Kalliope · Rating 4 out of 5]

I cannot remember what led me to acquire this. My knowledge of the sisters was rather vague; I did not even know how many there were, and my familiarity was centred around Nancy, the eldest, and the, possibly, most famous because of the popularity of her books. I have read in the past her Madame de Pompadour.

This book is not a good introduction to these notorious siblings. It assumes the reader already knows who is who, and the main events of their respective lives. A little index will help.

The family was formed by the parents David (1878-1958) and his wife Sidney (née Bowles– 1880 -1963), and the seven children: Nancy (1904-1973); Pam (1907-1994) (left with one leg shorter than the other); Tom (1909-1945); Diana (1910-2003); Unity (1914-1948); Jessica (1917- 1996); Deborah (1920-2014). There were therefor 16 years difference between the eldest and the younger.

Thompson sets off in what at first seems a dishevelled and gossipy socialite account of the Mitford clan. Names are succeeded by names and anecdotes of this sister or the other one, in this year or the other can very easily disorient the reader. But gradually the account begins to take shape and at the end of the book the reader may want to reread the very first chapter. Because Thompson’s goal is to inquire into a phenomenon with complex political, historical, social, anthropological and psychological content. For this family stood at the centre of British, and European, politics during the complex decades that followed the 1920s, and it was ripped apart by the extremist autocratic ideologies that were shaking European ideology. Two of their children lost their lives (Unity shot herself when Britain declared war and Tom fell in Burma as he refused to fight against the German front). Right wing extremism drew most of them, but Communism did also. One of the sisters (Nancy, a neutral one) betrayed another (Diana, the Fascist). And Jessica the Communist went strongly against her family, even though she also used them for her aims.

The family inherited but they were in general bad managers. In particular David, the father, had money slip through his fingers with greater ease than money. This relative pauper situation in comparison with their much wealthier peers in society (the Guinness, the Curzons..) however did not disturb their pride (the parents were against Diana marrying the Guinness heir). Later their successful writing eventually pulled several of them out of the money constrictions (mainly Nancy but later also Jessica and Diana to a certain extent).

The relationship amongst the various siblings was also extremely complex – the various layers that mixed admiration, clannish bonds, envy, love and ideology were at times unidentified even by them. The girls, all of strong character, all fell for strong men. The strongest of them all, Diana, had no willpower when it came to deal with her lover/second husband, the odious Oswald Mosley (father of the writer Nicholas Mosley – from his first marriage to a Curzon lady).

What one sees with this read is how very close Britain was to fall under the spell of the miraculous Germany. Hitler had signed in 1935 a naval agreement with Britain and was seeking an Anglo-German combination. We all know about the abdicated king (whose wife was a close friend of Diana), but there were many others - Lord Derby invited Hitler to his house for the Grand National. And I was captivated by the first suggestion I have found of why Hitler held back during the Dunkirk episode. He may have been still trying to negotiate peace. Thompson mentions that in May 1940, when Churchill was already prime minister, he and his War Cabinet had discussed the possibility of such an outcome. And this was also the time when the controversial Regulation 18b – which allowed detention without charges (which was applied to Mosley and Diana), was used in Britain.

How close some of the Mitfords got to Hitler and his circle is also astounding. It wasn’t just Unity (one rumour is that she and Adolf considered marriage) who kept her Munich closeness until it became really too late (only a bullet could offer an exit – it was Adolf who paid her hospital bill after her failed attempt), but also Tom and his very close friendship with the Hungarian archaeologist Count Almassy (anyone remembers the English patient? – As Almassy had worked in the Middle East, although he was a Nazi, he had no issue with the Jews ), and Diana and Mosley married secretly in Goebbels’ ministerial house. All the family, except Nancy and Jessica, had met Hitler by the time war broke out.

This was the world of Brideshead and of the Bright Young Things. The reading provides an extensive gallery of figures, most of whom would deserve their own biographies. Nancy in particular became very close to Evelyn Waugh and with him went Henry Green, Lytton Strachey, Carrington, the Sitwells and the Actons amongst many others. Waugh dedicated Vile Bodies to the Guinness (Bryan and Diana). It was also Nancy, once she settled in Paris, who moved around the Coopers and the De Gaulle crowd. And it was at a Kennedy ball (the father Joe was Ambassador) where Deborah met Andrew Cavendish, second son and eventual heir to the Duchy of Devonshire.

Thompson then, if not tracing the individual lives, is pursuing instead the Mitford myth in toto. Her first and brilliant first chapter is titled “The Mitford Phenomenon”. Even if there were six vortices that shaped the mystifying constellation, Thompson identifies a dominant axis drawn by Nancy, the mythmaker, and Diana, the mad factor. At the core of the Mitfordian system of stars, the author puts her finger on what made it pulsate: the upper-class indifference, the rabid self-assurance of adamantine strength, the enigmatic maze of sisterly feelings incomprehensible to outsiders, the ruthless and shame-free pursuit of absolutes, the ensnaring and beautiful charm, the mindboggling absurdities, their flirtation with defeat as well as their magic hold on success.

Though at first I was somewhat distraught by what seemed a disorderly account, as I progressed through the book, I think I understood what Thompson was striving at. Much more original, much more daring. And she has a sharp pen too.

And as with so many other books, this one has opened various paths for further reading.

[Christmas Carol ꧁꧂ · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5★

I read a lot of British Golden Age mysteries. They are full of stock characters & one of the most prevalent was The Wide-Eyed Ingenue who is overly dramatic, says (gasp) Such Things, but is forgiven because she is young & beautiful. Reading this biography you realise the six Mitford sisters were the templates.

Thompson seems similarly indulgent, particularly of Diana who she met & appears to hero worship. I wouldn't go as far to say I worship the eldest sister Nancy

but I am enormous admirer of her biographies & the one novel of hers I've read and it was very much a shock to find my idol had feet of clay. In fact feet???? The clay would go right up to her neck!

Most shocking was Nancy's betrayal of Diana. My first revulsion is now replaced by an understanding of how terrible a fascist world would have been, but to have urged a second time for Diana not to be released from prison when she was an unwell (but not broken) woman I find hard to understand - in particular when she knew how appalling the conditions were & that Diana & her second husband the infamous Oswald Mosley were kept in.

But Nancy gets less time from the author than Diana & Unity do - possibly because Thompson has already written a biography of Nancy Thompson suggests Unity was mentally ill which would certainly explain her hysterical adoption of the Nazi cause. I find this photo chilling;

Picture taken in Munich. Unity is wearing a uniform of Mosley's Black Shirts.

The other three sisters (Jessica, Pamela & Deborah) get relatively little page time. Pamela (who I think was an interesting character) gets less page time than the only Mitford boy Tom. Until reading this book I didn't know there was a brother!



Left to right: Unity, Tom, Deborah, Diana, Jessica,Nancy, Pamela

Like both Pamela & Deborah his views were right wing - just not as hard core as Diana & Unity. If I read a further biography I would like one of all seven siblings.

& I may look for a biography of Jessica - fascinating that her views were so diametrically opposed to her siblings & parents. At the time being a Communist would have been seen as worse that a Fascist. Now???

Edit; because forgot to mention that this book had one of the worst prologues I have read in quite some time!

[Hercho · Rating 1 out of 5]

I prefer my books about Nazis to be less sympathetic to them.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have enjoyed other books by Laura Thompson (“A Different Class of Murder,” about the Lord Lucan case, a biography of Agatha Christie and, “A Tale of Two Murders,” about Edith Thompson). However, despite the fact that the author constantly writes about subjects that interest me, she remains, for me, a four star, rather than a five star writer.

This is not the first biography of the Mitford’s that I have read, most notably, “The Sisters,” by Mary S. Lovell and, I have to say, that this suffers from other books by Thompson. A tendency to throw in every piece of research, a little disorganised at the beginning (although it settles down) and a little too much sympathy towards the subject she is writing about. She has real talent, but needs to pull her writing in and harden those critical views…

Still, whatever you think of them, it is almost impossible to find the Mitford sisters boring. There they are, with – as the author clearly states – the central figures of Nancy and Diana. Alongside, there are the politically extreme Jessica and Unity, plus Deborah and Pamela, the more ‘normal,’ sisters. Still, among the six, there are links, fissures, jealousies, cliques, resentments, disloyalties and all the family relationships, which also incorporated the only brother, parents, husbands, lovers and children.

Some of the betrayals in this book are minor ones, others had greater implications – such as Nancy’s evidence that the Mosley’s should be interned during the war. However, to be honest, it was these war years, where Thompson’s critical softness is most notable. She tries to excuse the most terrible behaviour and, yes, although it was impossible to know what would happen during WWII, Diana was only ever willing to admit to what she wished to admit to. If the sisters had faults (whether in the way they treated children, their irresponsibility, or their extreme political views) then Thompson is there to excuse and sympathise.

Overall, although this is an interesting read, it leaves you with more questions than answers and, as such, makes you feel you need to read more, to truly understand this family and the bonds between them.

Rated 3.5

[Sara G · Rating 2 out of 5]

I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This is a biography of all six Mitford sisters. We don't just hear about the bestselling novelist, or the one who left her husband to marry a fascist politician, or Hitler's biggest fangirl, or the Duchess of Devonshire, or the Communist one, or the one who lived as a English countrywoman. This book attempts the huge task of covering all their lives.

The Mitfords were an enigma of their time, and this author somewhat successfully explains why people still find them so fascinating. So why the two stars? This book is literally all over the place. It jumps around between sisters, while primarily focusing on Nancy (novelist) and Diana (fascist). I also felt like the narrative was rather biased towards Deborah (Duchess) and against Jessica (Communist), noticeably so in some passages. The timeline jumps around far too much, and it's hard to get started in this book without some previous knowledge of the Mitfords. I knew the basics about them, but this was my first time reading a history about any of these sisters. I'm pretty astute in keeping up with these sorts of things, but I found myself questioning why anyone cared about these people for a good percentage of the book. The author's introduction could use better editing to clarify this, instead of just rambling all over the place about the lives of these six women.

A tighter introduction and more cohesive timeline would have gone a long way towards resolving my issues with this book. I ended up only reading about 3/4 of the book and giving up, because I literally still did not care about the subject matter enough to try to navigate the nonexistent timeline.

[Cheryl · Rating 1 out of 5]

The Six, written about the Mitford sisters, was difficult to follow. I knew nothing about the family, and had hoped to learn more about them. I felt that this book was written for readers who already had some knowledge of the Mitford clan and the mores of the society in which they lived. The author skipped back and forth between the antics of the sisters and their friends which was very confusing. I also felt that it was presumed that the reader had read the novels written by Nancy Mitford. Although this book did not appeal to me, The Six is a book that would appeal to people who already are familiar with the Mitfords.

Thank you to Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for giving me the opportunity to read the ARC of this book.

[Calzean · Rating 1 out of 5]

Disappointing. The author starts a theme (like one of the Mitford sisters, an event or year) then flits across people, places and periods with gay abandon. She constantly cross refers real events with the stories of Nancy Mitford which was really annoying. She also constantly referenced other books or characters as analogies which bogged the book down with deviations. DNF.

[Roman Clodia · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you don't know much about the Mitfords and have never read Nancy Mitford's books then this probably isn't the right biography for you: Thompson seems to want to do a C21st reappraisal of the Mitford phenomenon, a nice idea - but she ends up offering a jumpy account that feels unbalanced and with fatal holes that make this ultimately an unsatisfying read.

One of the tests for a Mitford biographer is how to deal with the unpalatable: Diana's marriage to Oswald Mosley and her embracing of fascism (he was the leader of the British Union of Fascists) and Unity's obsession with Hitler. Thompson hasn't quite made up her mind, and so veers between apologetics, side-stepping (the 'lots of other English people felt the same' defence) and sheer mystification: '"The Fuhrer is the kindest man in the world, isn't he?" replied Diana. Again, can she really have meant it?' Well, you're the biographer, Ms Thompson, isn't it for you to put forward your thesis? Similarly, we're told at various points 'her thoughts were an irreducible mystery' and, on Unity, the equivocal 'Was she mad? Surely yes; although she need not have been'. I also found myself choking with laughter at the idea of Mosley's desire for peace with Germany appearing to a modern post-Holocaust readership as merely 'rather dreadful' - really, just 'dreadful'? In the same sentence that mentions the footage from Auschwitz?

There doesn't seem to be any new research here to add to the record, and while the beginning tracing the Mitford ancestors feels a bit too long and over-detailed, the lives of the girls themselves feels a bit random and arbitrary as we jump around between the sisters and backwards and forwards in time.

Overall, then, this is interesting enough to have kept me reading to the end, but is also frustrating in that it could have been better.

Thanks to the publisher for an ARC via NetGalley

[Elizabeth George · Rating 3 out of 5]

I quite enjoyed this book. I was aware of who the Mitford sisters were, especially Nancy and Deborah who became the Duchess of Devonshire and brought Chatsworth House back to life. But I had no knowledge of the other sisters, particularly of poor cursed Unity. I found the period of time fascinating and the relationships they developed with people within the Nazi party (particularly with Hitler) amazing. But then, I'm an anglophile. The book mixes the history of the time period with the history of the women and their fascinating relationships with each other, with men, and with their parents. If you aren't into things British, you probably won't like it.

[Susanna - Censored by GoodReads · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an interesting account, but it's certainly not overly chronologically organized. Nor is it organized by woman. I'm not sure how it's organized, actually; it seems to wander. However, it is interesting. Curiously, it also stops with the death of their mother, when the five who survived the war have at least a decade to live, and Deborah over five decades.

It's also strangely uneven in coverage. If you're interested in Nancy, Diana, or Unity - great news! They are covered fully. If you're interested in Jessica, Deborah, or Pamela, you are not so lucky. Jessica is covered mostly to say "her memory is faulty," Deborah mostly to say "Jessica's memory is faulty" or to point out how she's the sane one, and Pamela mostly is missing. The important journalist, the savior of Chatsworth, and the muse of John Betjeman (who ended up a lesbian?) are missing.

Also - this is a curiously biased book. It's hard to write sympathetically about Sir Osbert and Lady Diana Mosley, but she tries. I don't say she really succeeds. She is also as biased against Jessica Mitford as she is in favor of her older sister. Perhaps this is because she interviewed Diana, rather than Jessica.

Names dropped which don't surprise me: Adolph Hitler, Evelyn Waugh, and John Betjeman.

Names dropped which did surprise me: Niki Lauda, Sonja Henie, Katherine Graham, Ian Fleming, and Ronnie Kray.

[Elizabeth Pappas · Rating 1 out of 5]

There are a couple of structural problems with this book: first of all, it appears to be a biography, but it’s not. It’s a collection of anecdotes and the author’s opinions, which leaves out huge chunks of time, is not linear, and ignores those sisters that the author isn’t interested in. The book also makes frequent assumptions about peoples’ thoughts and motivations, never pointing to sources to back up those assumptions. When sources are mentioned, it is only to state that Jessica Mitford’s writing cannot be trusted, with no explanation as to why.

It becomes clear why as the content issues with the book manifest; Jessica was a Communist, and the author apparently is very right-wing. The Nazi and Fascist members of the family are constantly defended and apologized for throughout (the most frequent refrain is, despite several Mitfords becoming close friends of Hitler’s and directly stating that they despised Jews, that they can’t possibly have been anti-Semitic because they had Jewish friends). A favorite moment is when one sister, imprisoned in England during WWII because she was a fascist friend of Hitler’s, claims that Hitler would never be so barbaric as to imprison a woman and separate her from her baby...and the author praises this as a brave, insightful statement (the sister in question, by the way, was allowed visits with her children and moved to house arrest when her health was delicate—not exactly how the Nazis treated their prisoners). Every once in a while she throws in an “Of course, one can’t possibly defend the Nazis,” but that’s not quite enough for me.

The fascist/Nazi apologism is enough to put me off the book, but there’s some sexism in there too—the sisters are praised exclusively for their beauty and their charm, and every single aspect of their lives, from their political views to their career choices to the frequently-mentioned beauty, is attributed to hyper-masculine men.

[GoldGato · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Mitford family was a big deal in the middle 20th-Century, known mostly for their extremism in politics and for Nancy Mitford’s literary fame. Here, author Laura Thompson attempts to de-mystify the Mitford aura, while providing the historical background for their shenanigans.

Let’s start with the family unit, as a whole. The father was a well-off British aristocrat who managed to turn everything he touched to financial failure. This seems to have been a recurring trend for many of the British upper class of that time period. The mother was the strength of the family, though maybe a little cuckoo, given her support of the Nazi Party. There was one son, Tom, who lost his life fighting in World War II Burma. A fascist with sympathy for Hitler, he chose to fight in the Far East, so he wouldn’t have to battle the Germans. As in fictional novels, the tragedies just piled up, like a long fog-induced car wreck.

The eldest daughter was Nancy Mitford, known for her autobiographical novels. She seems to have been the most independent of the Mitford Six, perhaps because she was able to carve a profitable business life of her own, thanks to her best-sellers. She would leave for France and stay there, separating herself from the others. Which, in retrospect, seems rather sane.

Pamela Mitford opted for a rural lifestyle, marrying and then divorcing wealthy scientist Derek Jackson. While she wasn’t one of the confirmed nutter Mitfords, she did display a liking for fascism and exhibited anti-Semite beliefs.

The middle sister was Diana Mitford, who married the British fascist leader, Sir Oswald Mosley, he of the notorious blackshirts. He was a nutbucket, through and through. Considered the most beautiful and charismatic of the Mitfords, Diana stayed loyal to Mosley, which meant she was sent to prison during WWII, to ensure she wasn’t supporting the Germans while thousands of her countrymen laid their lives down in wartime sacrifice.

It’s time to move on to Unity, the real wacko of the family. She was so obsessed with Adolf Hitler that she shot herself in the head after Great Britain declared war on Nazi Germany. She didn’t immediately die but spent the rest of her short life in deteriorating physical condition, eventually succumbing to meningitis related to the still-embedded bullet.

Up next was Jessica, who being a Mitford, decided to go to the other extreme and became a follower of Stalin. Because why not. She moved to the United States and became a member of the American Communist Party. After realizing the extent of Stalin’s crimes, she left the Party and became a journalist with two famous non-fiction books before eventually settling down as a university professor in California. She was the “red sheep” of the family.

The youngest Mitford was Deborah, who became the Duchess of Devonshire through marriage. Perhaps she saw life a little bit more clearly than her older siblings, but she was the level-headed youngster who seemed to enjoy life at an easier pace. Of course, if you’re a duchess you can do that.

These were posh women who had the time to shout about their politics because they really didn’t have much else to do. In essence, they were the privileged who were bored by the comfort the rest of us work a lifetime to achieve. But there was something in the blood, or at least something from the controlling mother, which led them to the dark side of politics. They did indeed sail close to the darkness.

This book was a tough read for me. First, I took an instant disliking to every single one of them. The parents, Tom, each sister. They either had the lunacy of the Right or the hypocrisy of the Left. It’s one thing to voice your political beliefs because you’re young and stupid, it’s quite another to continue to believe in those politics when the world is in the midst of the deadliest war of all time. As for the book itself, I had a difficult time following the thread, if there was one. One minute it’s all about Nancy, but then Unity is the star of the next few pages, then it’s time for Diana again, and hey, here comes Jessica ‘round the corner. My mind reeled.

Book Season = Year Round (tempests in fragile teapots)

[Rachael Eyre · Rating 2 out of 5]

A peculiar, partisan biography of the Mitfords. It's as though the author had each sister cast in an archetypal role - Nancy the Trickster Author, Diana the Enigmatic Madonna, Unity the Delinquent -and stuck firmly to that, eschewing anything that might state otherwise.

She has an unsettling partiality for Diana: it reads almost like a love letter to her. (Might her opacity be due to the fact there was nothing there?) I was irked by the depiction of Diana and Mosley's jail time as an idyll; it was as ludicrous as suggesting that Adolf and Eva's stay in the bunker was a romantic getaway. Most damningly, Diana is quoted as having said she "didn't believe" in the Holocaust. That looks awfully like Holocaust denial from where I'm standing, which is morally indefensible.

Her representation of Unity is equally problematic. Perhaps Unity started out as a stupid girl playing with forces beyond her comprehension, but when the crush is on Hitler and the cause is Nazism, sympathy is impossible. There is no way that someone as close to the inner circle as Unity could have been ignorant of the ugly side of the cult. Thompson even recounts an incident where Unity is practising shooting; when asked what she's doing, she says she's "practising killing Jews." This is not somebody performing or trying to shock. This is somebody in deadly earnest.

Thompson overcompensates with an irrational dislike for Nancy and Jessica, seeing their actions in the worst possible light. Deborah is patronised as a saintly peacemaker - the token "normal" Mitford - while Pamela and Tom are mere ciphers. I couldn't help feeling this high handed attitude to Nancy and Decca was rich, because they're the reason the Mitford industry exists! Without their novels and memoirs the family would have been consigned to the dustbin of history as a clan of outlandish, racist snobs. In fact, I was surprised and concerned to learn she has written a biography of Nancy, since her contempt for her is palpable.

It's a shame because their story is a riveting one; I've watched better told and certainly more organised documentaries on the subject. Thompson has an 'everything but the kitchen sink' approach, pinballing from one date or anecdote to the next. I can only imagine how confusing this might have been to newcomers to the mythos, or readers unfamiliar with Nancy's books. Though it has made me want to read Hons and Rebels, which I don't doubt is a far superior book.

[Beth · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'll read just about anything about the Mitfords, but this new biography was a serious disappointment. It's frustratingly uneven, positioning Nancy and Diana as rival queens at either end of an imaginary chessboard; the rest of the large, eccentric Mitford clan are propelled erratically around the board in service of this awkward metaphor. Pam barely appears in the narrative at all, and Jessica and Deborah's immense accomplishments are relegated almost entirely to the afterword, where they are summed up in a few scant paragraphs--a frankly bizarre editorial decision, given the scope of their respective careers (as an investigative journalist and the preserver of Chatsworth, respectively.)

These omissions and elisions allow Thompson to devote more space to Diana, whose legendary beauty continues to bamboozle historians and biographers from beyond the grave. Surely, Thompson repeatedly suggests, someone so lovely, so graceful, and so articulate couldn't have truly believed all those repellent things...? (Yes, I'm very much afraid that Diana could, and that she did--and just once I'd like to see a biographer come out and state it plainly.) Unity, too, is treated more kindly here than she deserves; but Thompson's defense of Unity feels halfhearted and perfunctory in comparison to her apologia for Diana, who frankly does not deserve it.

[Louise Culmer · Rating 3 out of 5]

When i was deciding whether or not to buy this book, i asked myself: "do i really need another book about the mitford sisters?" well, it turns out the answer to that is no. While intereting enough, there is nothing here that has not been discussed in more detail in Mary Lovell's excellent Mitford Girls. Moreover Laura Thompson has a habit of darting about in time which I found rather disconcerting - one minute it's 1935, then it's 1938, then back to 1936, she does this rather a lot. She seems to lose interest in the Mitfords well before the end of their lives, the main narrative ends abruptly with the death of lady Redesdale in 1963, and the book is finished with a short synopsis of what happened to each sister thereafter. she also uses some rather inept comparisons, she talks about Mosley's British Union of fascists being regenerated 'like Doctor Who.' Well no, actually, not really like Doctor Who at all. if you want to read a book about the Mitford Sisters, i would advise going for Mary Lovell's book, which is much better than this one.

[Simon · Rating 2 out of 5]

I imagine that anyone who is not broadly familiar with the Mitfords will have difficulty with this one. Thompson is very good in her analysis of Nancy's novels, less so with her understanding of Diana (she seems to have succumbed to the legendary charm, and is willing to cut Lady Mosley a lot of slack. If you want to hear why people could detest Nard, listen to her Desert Island Discs recording from the late 1980s.) Debo simply blew her out of the water. Pam is a cipher, Thompson seems irritated with Decca (most people were, so that's okay), and she can't decide how she feels about Muv and Farve. It's Unity who is the stumbling block, though, because try as she might, Thompson can't come to any real grips with the life of the weirdest sister.

But there are some real nuggets in the book. I particularly enjoyed one of the end notes, where Thompson sources her description of Diana's feelings about Nancy late in life. At some point when her hostess turned away, another guest hissed at Thompson "she hates Nancy!" Well, she had some cause. Nancy denounced her own sister and helped get her tossed into Holloway, although surely Oswald Mosley had more to do with that.

Tom Mitford eludes a biographer, as usual. He really suffers in this one, though, as he has been photoshopped out of the picture that adorns the cover. The reader knows this because someone had the bright idea of sticking the picture inside the book, and there is Tom, standing one in from the left. It's almost a metaphor for his life.

If you like the idea of the Mitfords, there are some provocative conclusions about their psychologies. Thompson did meet Debo and Diana while they were extant. One could have wished Nancy lived long enough to take her measure. Mitfords do not like being analyzed, and it can be deduced that Thompson knows it, and therefore waited until there were no longer sisters on the ground before embarking on this book.

For diehards.

[Eve Dangerfield]

Oh man...
I'm not sure what to think. On one hand, this book seemed well researched (there were neat details about the Mitfords I'd never heard before and unlike others I didn't think the timeline was too confusing) on the other Thompson's voice and personal opinions absolutely dominated this book in a way I've never seen in something that purports itself as historically accurate non-fiction.
Other reviewers have pointed out Thompson was heavy-handed in her praise of Diana (unrepentant fascist and OG fan of Hitler) and condemnation of Jessica (a far-left communist) but, goddamn, they undersold it.
Thompson's Diana gushing is at Hoover Dam proportions-she praises her brains (calling her the most intelligent Mitford girl), her charm and most of all her beauty. Oh God, the unending, paragraph-long reminders Diana was beautiful. It would be gross even if she hadn't been a Nazi sympathiser, but she was a Nazi sympathiser and while humanising and acknowledging complicated truths is a great thing, what's on display here is just embarrassing. Thompson can't mention a single historical fact about Diana-like that she was an unapologetic Fascist who treated her first husband cruelly and aided and abetted Oswald Mosely in maintaining his xenophobic political career-without steering the conversation back to "imagine what Diana could have been if she hadn't pledged her life to a man whose political party was literally funded by Hitler...oh god, she was just so, so beautiful and dignified, everyone loved her, even Hitler, but like, don't read into that. Everyone loved her."
This plays even worse next to the bizarrely negative portrayal of Jessica. Again, I'm not such a fan of Hons and Rebels that I couldn't have dealt with criticism of the girl but Thompson has literally nothing nice to say about a woman who lost two children, a husband, dedicated her life to supporting the working class and civil rights, had as many highs and lows in her relationship to her parents as the rest of them did and WASN'T A FUCKING NAZI.
When Jessica had her car torched by civil rights activists Thompson says she was "probably proud" a statement of pure, unadulterated speculation. Later she writes that Jessica's "extremism was more acceptable than her (NAZI) sisters-such is the luck of the left."
Yeah, lucky.
Lucky.
So very lucky.
Unity and Diana definitely didn't choose to become Nazi sympathisers who loved Hitler. Who could have known that wouldn't age well?
So lucky...
I need to lie down, but before I go; I wouldn't recommend this book for other non-Diana-slobber reasons. For such a long novel there was barely anything about Pam or Tom, little of Deborah, dribs and drabs about Unity and aside from liberal slaggings (did you know Jessica was the only Mitford girl not to retain her looks?), Jessica's story is barely told. Except her first husband, literal freedom fighter Esmond Rommily is portrayed as just as bad, or even worse than Oswald Mosley, who I cannot emphasise enough, founded a fascist political party that was funded by Hitler. Nancy gets a decent look in, but then she's also called the black queen to Diana's white queen, which is a reference to their natures and not their political allegiances, but still, it's all a bit much.
Strongly suggest Mitford aficionados direct their interest elsewhere.

[Kate Forsyth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first became aware of the controversial and fascinating lives of the six Mitford sisters when Mary Hoffman, a writer friend of mine, took me to see their graves in the cemetery in Swinbrook, a village in the Cotswolds near where the family grew up. Only four of the six sisters are buried there – Nancy the Writer, Unity the Nazi, Diana the Fascist, and Pamela the Boring One. The other two sisters are known as Jessica the Communist and Deborah the Duchess, I kid you not.

After Mary told me something of their lives, I became so interested that I read a few biographies about the family. Unity and Diana ended up having cameo appearances in my novel The Beast’s Garden, which tells the story of the secret underground resistance to Hitler in Berlin during the Third Reich. Both Unity and Diana were avid supporters of Hitler and the Nazis, and Unity shot herself in the head when England declared war on Germany (Diana spent most of the war in prison).

The Mitfords were an impoverished aristocratic family with seven children (the only son, Tom Mitford, could be nicknamed the One Who Everyone Forgets).

Nancy (b. 1904) was a bestselling novelist and biographer; Pamela (b. 1907) was a country woman who bred chickens; Tom (b. 1909) was killed in action during the Second World War; Diana (b.1910) was considered one of the most beautiful women of the age and left her first husband Bryan Guinness (of the Guinness beer fortune) to marry Oswald Moseley, founder of the British Union of Fascists; Unity (b. 1914) was in love with Hitler and tried to commit suicide the day war broke out (she survived another nine years); Jessica (b. 1917) eloped with her cousin Esmond Romilly to serve in the Spanish Civil War and was later active in the American Civil Rights movement; and Deborah (b. 1920) become the Duchess of Devonshire and ran Chatsworth House, the house famous for playing the role of Pemberley in the 2005 film with Keira Knightley).

No wonder people find them fascinating!

If you have never heard of the Mitford sisters, this is may not the place to start as the author assumes the reader is familiar with the lives, loves and hates of the six young women. (Start by reading Nancy’s novels The Pursuit of Love and Love in A Cold Climate, and then move on to Jessica’s autobiography Hons & Rebels.)

However, for someone who knows the background and is familiar with previous biographies, this book offers fresh material in the form of interviews with the last two surviving Mitfords, Diana and Deborah, before their deaths. And Laura Thompson does not pass judgement on the six sisters and their sometimes disastrous choices – she allows them to speak to us in their own words, through quotes from letters and diaries and interviews, so we may draw our own conclusions.

[Kate · Rating 1 out of 5]

Gross.

Like many I'm sure, I'd read Love in a Cold Climate, etc. years ago and it made me curious about the complex and divergent paths of these iconic sisters, amplified as they were by the unique and explosive time period in which their lives played out.

Some of the sisters are more likeable than others. Some harbor a very nonchalant, yet powerful hatred within them and are easily attracted by the political extremes that polarized nations upon the precipice of the second world war. Was it all black and white, or can some grey be sussed from the middle where the contradictions of human nature lie? This begs inspection and understanding on a personal level. Any cataclysmic twist and turn in the historical record does.

That's not what Thompson does here.

She dives into the deep-end of excuses, rationales; one can almost imagine her arms flapping and an occasional gurgle as she struggles to keep her head above water. She's clearly as much a victim of the "Mitfordian" charm as anyone else in the narrative and runs interference on their behalf in a manner that would defy any editor's attempt to compile an index of supporting documentation that didn't look like a rusted old sieve.

It's a white wash. A very, very transparent white wash. She concludes at each turn that none of the sisters were evil, possessed evil, or were anti-semites—they were merely in proximity to it all, were pre-disposed to hear the siren song of these alpha males, and only espoused such views because they didn't know any better/were just caught up in things/liked the attention, etc. Not only is that laughable, it's insulting to the sister's intelligence to buy into such an idea. One does not need to be dull-witted to be evil.

I should have done better research myself and chose a different biography of these sisters—Lovell and Guinness (obvs) seem to have drunk the Diana kool-aid...but I hope there is one out there that takes a more balanced and critically astute look. That could prove interesting and a useful case study for our own times.

[Amy]

Alas, I'm giving up. I'm sure this is a perfectly lovely biography if you already know about the Mitford Sisters. If names like Nancy and Unity and Jessica mean anything to you, then you'll probably be able to jump right in. But I know nothing about the Mitford sisters. Hence why I decided to read this biography. Except the author is so enamored with her subjects that she never seems to pause and see if her reader is too.

[Allison · Rating 1 out of 5]

I find the Mitford sisters to be fascinating, so I was excited to start this book. It was abysmally written though. I could write pages about all the problems with it, but I don't have time. So I will just say don't waste your time.

[Daniel Myatt · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting listen!

More details and stories about what we're some incredible siblings (although quite, quite mad though I feel at times)

[Margot McGovern · Rating 5 out of 5]

To me, biography is something of an alien landscape entered rarely and (I admit) reluctantly. I stumbled upon Laura Thompson’s Take Six Girls: The Lives of the Mitford Sisters (2015) quite by chance and by way of fiction. About a year ago, enchanted by Evelyn Waugh’s depictions of the Bright Young People, I finally read Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love (1945) and Love in a Cold Climate (1949). Both are fiction but draw heavily from fact, and Mitford’s wit (shot through with melancholy) pushed them high into my favourites list. I knew—vaguely—who the Mitford sisters were: an infamous gaggle of girls who came of age between world wars and whom, as Nancy repeatedly noted, could not separate the personal from the political. They were perhaps the one family in Britain who between them could boast close friendships with both Hitler and Churchill.

However, they’d probably still be on my ‘must read more about that…’ list, had I not spied the name ‘Mitford’ in the Adelaide Writers’ Week programme and attended Thompson’s session on a whim. By the end of the hour, I was eager for more. I hightailed it to the book tent to collect a copy of Take Six Girls and settled down to read, for once ignoring my teetering review pile (well played, Writers’ Week. Well played).

So, full confession, a) I have no idea how to review biography, and b) I raved about Take Six Girls so much that my dad (who loves biography) insisted that I leave the book in Adelaide with him when I flew home to Perth, meaning that I don’t even have the book to refer to or quote from. Clearly, much thoughtful analysis lies ahead. I considered not writing about it at all, but I do so want to recommend it. Thompson starts with a brief introduction to the girls, the Mitford myth and the political climate they helped shape. A brief recap for those who aren’t familiar: Nancy (1904 – 1973) was a novelist and biographer; Pamela (1907 – 1994) was a country woman, perhaps the dullest of the bunch; Diana (1910 – 2003) was hailed as one of the most beautiful women of the age and first married Bryan Guinness (yes, of Guinness beer) then left him to marry Oswald Moseley, founder of the British Union of Fascists; Unity (1914 – 1948) was a close confidant of Hitler, shot herself in the head the day war broke out and survived for another nine years; Jessica (1917 – 1996) was a journalist and communist and eloped with Esmond Romilly to serve in the Spanish Civil War and was later active in the American Civil Rights movement; and Deborah (1920 – 2014) married to become the Duchess of Devonshire and ran Chatsworth House, one of Britain’s most impressive estates. You can just imagine what family get-togethers were like.

Thompson then begins the book proper by offering some background on the Mitford family and its place among the British aristocracy. She draws vivid portraits of the girls’ parents, David and Sydney, and evokes the sisters’ rather unconventional childhood being shunted from one sprawling estate to the next. She guides her reader through each girl’s debut but dedicates the bulk of the book to the extraordinary events that occurred once these six remarkable women were let loose on polite society.

Thompson doesn’t seek to mask her love of the Mitfords, but nor does she romanticise the sisters or exonerate them. Rather, she seeks first to differentiate between reality and myth (the latter largely perpetuated by Nancy’s novels and Jessica’s ostensibly non-fiction Hons and Rebels (1960)) and then to understand (rather than justify) each sister’s actions and beliefs and the ever-shifting alliances between them. To do so, she moves seamlessly between the personal and the political.

In her research for the book, Thompson met with the last two surviving Mitfords, Dianna and Deborah, as well as some the Mitford sisters’ children. Her narration is peppered with quotes and snippets from the sisters’ writings (particularly their letters), which adds credibility to the text and flavours it with the famous Mitford wit. However, even without the sisters’ voices, it would be an enjoyable read, with Thompson combining her considerable research with wit and charm of her own.

Finally, Thompson doesn’t assume her reader possesses encyclopaedic knowledge of the who’s who of early-to-mid 20th-century British aristocracy, or of WWII politics. Rather she navigates her reader through her research like an expert hostess welcoming a guest to her party, offering succinct introductions and establishing context as she goes.

Take Six Girls makes for compelling reading, whether you’re a Mitford buff or merely curious.

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[Caroline · Rating 4 out of 5]

This biography isn't quite like any I've ever read before. For a start, tackling six lives in one book would be challenge enough - but when those six are the Mitford sisters, who somehow seem to simultaneously embody and transcend the tumultuous years they lived in, the challenge is so much more daunting. And yet it would almost be dishonest to attempt a biography of just one sister alone (assuming, of course, you could pick one of greater interest than all of the rest - when you have a best-selling author, a radical socialist, a fascist politician's wife, a fanatical Nazi in love with Hitler, and the Duchess of Devonshire to choose from) - their lives were so intertwined, and their personalities and characters so shaped by and dependent on those of the other sisters, that to tell one story in isolation to the rest would be missing so much of relevance and import that it would scarcely seem worthwhile.

There is much to dislike about the Mitfords - their politics, their breezy upper-class obliviousness, their careless cruelty, their cliquish snobbery, their jealousies, rivalries and betrayals - but there is much to admire too. There was something uniquely 'them' about them, a refusal to be anything other than who they were, a refusal to bend to events, relationships, traumas, a refusal to apologise or explain. They were a unique product of a very particular time and place, and their capacity to inspire enduring fascination is a much a result of the pre-world aristocratic world they emerged from as it is about them. And, too, that fascination is also a result of their collective nature - a Nancy Mitford on her own would have been a talented but perhaps not exceptional author; a Diana Mitford would be a footnote in her infamous husband's biography; a Unity Mitford might be a bizarre cautionary tale. But together, they were something unheard of, something remarkable - six strong-willed, independent, beautiful, aristocratic sisters taking the world head-on.

So then this is a biography not of Nancy and Diana, Pamela and Jessica, Deborah and Unity, but of the sisters as a collective: The Mitford Sisters. And it's an enchanting read. I can only assume that much of the arch, nonchalant tone of the sisters' letters and words has rubbed off on Laura Thompson's own style, that perhaps inhabiting the sisters' lives to the extent required when writing a biography has led her to almost - not imitate, that would be too strong a word, but - assume that kind of tone herself. This is the kind of knowing, insouciant, personal memoir that once upon a time would have been intended only for a select readership, for family and friends rather than the wider world. I'm only grateful that it is the latter.

[Toni · Rating 4 out of 5]

The final title for this book in the USA is simply, "The Six" and our cover is much better too. Thanks to NetGalley I was able to secure a copy of this interesting book.
Although the halfbaked Mitford sisters have been the subject of books well before this tome, this one is more fluid. Six females, born starting in 1904 through 1920, would put a strain on any family, aristocrats or not. One would expect jealousy, grabs for attention, and most of all, my cause is better than your cause. The Mitford sisters went in big with politics, war and a racist and a Nazi or two. Add one of them trying to commit suicide for the Fuhrer. It didn't work. Where were the parents? They weren't much better, nor could they have been much help. Interesting story nonetheless. Authors, a Duchess, a journalist. Discover all the ways six wealthy sisters became more than themselves, despite each other.
Recommend!

[Jess · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was FASCINATING. I saw a lot of reviews complaining about the book being hard to follow because it wasn't organized chronologically or by sister, but I did not have a hard time with the format at all. I did think the book could have used some more attention to Jessica and Deborah, because it is very preoccupied with Nancy, Diana, and Unity. But overall, I devoured this and I want to know all the things, which is more or less my criteria for a great non-fiction read.

[Ashley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having already read one collective biography of the Mitford sisters, I was unsure of the value of reading another; however, all the reviews of this one pointed out that it was of value even to fans who had read all the other biographical studies around, so I decided to take them at their word. I think they were right; Thompson does take a fresh approach to the lives of the sisters, giving a better picture of the social world the family inhabited rather than providing one more survey of their romantic exploits and political beliefs.
Goodreads' five-star rating system continues to be a source of frustration--I'd rather give this three and a half out of five stars, or better, six or seven out of ten. I'm a bit ambivalent about Thompson's style of writing; slipping in and out of a narrative voice of someone who was there among the sisters as their private dramas played out is one of the techniques that makes the retelling of these well-known stories feel new, but I always find it jarring when a biographer decides to judge what a subject was or wasn't truly feeling when there is no first-hand evidence to support such conclusions. (She interviewed Diana and Deborah, so in that regard I trust that she is relaying what was told to her; she could not possibly have interviewed Tom, and yet more than once states with authority that he really thought this or that, contradicting what his sisters or close friends reported. Without Tom himself to confirm which of the conflicting impressions of him was accurate and no letters or journal entries to cite as direct evidence, we can't possibly know what he was actually thinking.)
The thing that bothered me most is Thompson's determination to convince us that Unity Mitford remained essentially a teenage fangirl even before her suicide attempt and that Diana Moseley was an admirable person. She makes no excuses for Hitler, the Nazi party, or the atrocities of WWII; she does, however, remind us repeatedly that no one in Britain knew about Buchenwald, Auschwitz, etc., in 1938, and insists that both Oswald and Diana Moseley's Nazi sympathies were born of a desire to see Britain retain its status as an empire and return to a more secure economic footing--preferably one where the aristocracy was restored to its Victorian and Edwardian glory days. After all, we are reminded more than once, Diana had Jewish friends. I would have more patience with this if there was any indication that either Moseley felt any remorse for the millions of people Hitler and his regime murdered, but the best there is is a mild sense of regret that so many died, and the Desert Island Discs interview where Diana's response to the reminder of the Holocaust victims was "Oh, I don't think it was so many as that." Thompson takes pains to remind us that Oswald Moseley may have been a fascist, but he wasn't a Nazi; given his interactions with Hitler, Himmler, and the Nazi high command, this fact seems to me incidental in that he was not a German citizen, not an indication that he would have spoken out, let alone done anything to stop, what the Nazis did. Presuming he and Diana were utterly unaware of what was going on at the time, which strikes me as extremely unlikely, despite Thompson's assurances.
In between all of the making excuses for Diana and, to a lesser extent, Moseley and Unity, she is frequently critical of Jessica, and Esmond Romilly she condemns outright, even as she states herself that Jessica's political intensity was little different in essence from Diana's and Unity's, albeit with a different focus. If Diana and all the other Nazi sympathizers of varying degrees in her family, including her parents, her sister Pam, and Pam's husband Derek Jackson, should be excused to an extent because the general public in Britain was unaware of the concentration camps (the Night of the Long Knives and Kristallnacht were hardly secret, but apparently not enough proof of Hitler's murderous intent for some of the Mitfords), I am entirely confused as to why Jessica's actions as a teenager were so much worse than Unity's or Diana's, or why Esmond Romilly was a worse person than Oswald Moseley. If Thompson (or any other Mitford biographer) has argued that Jessica or Esmond knew or should have known about Stalin's atrocities in the 1940s, I missed it, and yet he is described as "repellent" while Moseley is "a life force". Esmond made some poor choices--to put it mildly--and was by no means a paragon of virtue, but it was jessica herself who recorded some of the incidents and statements upon which Thompson bases her evaluation of him, and one cannot fault his loyalty to Jessica. The excusing and explaining away of Nazi sympathies because Unity was childish and strange and Sydney was an immensely strong person and Diana was just so beautiful and magnetic is frustrating, often maddening. Perhaps they weren't anti-Semitic (although Diana proudly asserted that she was); perhaps they were not aware of what was really going on at the time, although Unity reported back to her family that she had moved into the flat of a "Jewish couple who had gone on holiday". The Mitfords and their respective lovers, spouses, and friends were many things, but none of them were stupid. Diana above all never apologized for her views; strength of mind this may have been, but it is hardly an admirable quality when applied to the denial of mass murder.

[Patrizia · Rating 2 out of 5]

If Nancy Mitford herself had written a parody on Mitford Sisters books, The Six would be it.

By itself, The Six is beyond dreadful. As a satire, though, it works brilliantly with its gratuitous French phrases; its mad ricocheting between years; its logical lapses (uh – since Highland Fling was published some months before Vile Bodies, how could Vile Bodies possibly have been an influence on it? Wouldn’t it have been the other way around?); its absolutely bizarre references to contemporary phenomena (“Nevertheless Nancy’s friends were peculiarly well equipped to deal with the longeurs of a life without Instagram”.)

It works particularly well as a parody if you experience it as I experienced it as an audiobook, read aloud in fruity U tones (figger for "figure" barred for "bird", etc) by a female narrator whom I couldn't help fantasizing was the ghost of Sydney Lady Redesdale.

The book desperately wants to be taken seriously, though.

In particular, Thompson seems to be on a quest to rehabilitate Diana Mitford’s reputation.

Now, Diana seems to have been a singularly unpleasant human being, humorless and narcissistic. She was born with two tremendous privileges in the full early 21st century use of the word: centuries of aristocratic inbreeding and that kind of beauty that seems almost supernatural, particularly if you’re a fanboy or fangirl of the Aryan ideal.

She married the heir to the Guinness brewing fortune for money and then abandoned him after she discovered orgasms with Sir Oswald Mosley, 6th Baronet of Ancoats and the leader of the British Union of Fascists.

Adolph Hitler was the guest of honor at Diana’s wedding to Mosley, which was held at the home of Joseph Goebbels. Hitler’s gift to the newlyweds was his portrait in a silver frame.

During WWII, the Mosleys’ fascist sympathies got them locked up for three years. No matter. “It was still lovely to wake up in the morning and feel that one was lovely One,” Diana pronounced. Nancy later stole the line for Love in a Cold Climate.

Subsequently, Diana affirmed her disbelief in the Holocaust on more than one occasion. A diamond swastika was found among her possessions when she died in Paris in 2003.

Sorry, Laura Thompson: There is no way to rehabilitate Diana.

Such redemptive grace as can fall upon her – any gentle rain from heaven droppeth-ing, as it were – is entirely a byproduct of the regretful, sisterly affection with which Nancy the novelist and Jessica (Decca) the investigative journalist continued to regard her.

Thompson’s take on the continuing fascination with the Mitfords is that they represent some kind of 1930s version of the Kardashian sisters – possibly because this is the commercial hook she’s using to push yet another Mitford biography into an increasingly foundering publishing industry that’s saturated with Mitford biographies.

The comparison does not stand up. First, the Mitfords did not seem to be overly fascinated by their own vaginas, and second, they weren’t peddling a lifestyle.

No, the fascination with the Mitfords endures because of they were minor characters in significant historical events. And minor characters in history are frequently much more fascinating than major characters.

[Lady Megan Fischer · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 🌟

I like Laura Thompson well enough as an author and am fairly fascinated by the Mitford sisters, so this should have been a slam dunk read for me. But, it missed. The organization of the book is largely at fault; rather, the lack of any discernible organization system made this book kind of a slog. Instead of moving chronologically or discussing one person at a time, it’s all jumbled together, turning it into a bit of an unruly mess — especially because, in addition to the 6 sisters and their brother, Thompson also includes their parents, grandparents, friends, and numerous references to all of the novels and biographies they wrote. The weeds get mighty high, and it’s tedious chopping to make your way through it.
I was also bothered by Thompson’s unwillingness to cast much judgment on Unity and especially Diana Mitford for their support of Fascism, the Nazi Party, and Hitler. Once and for always and ever, Nazis are bad. I just don’t get why that is so hard for some people — especially those who write about the Mitfords — to say. In every biography I’ve read, authors seem so enamored of Diana, but it’s Nancy, the novelist who betrays her sisters in support of Britain and the Allies, who should be center stage. Surely we aren’t ignoring Diana’s sins simply because she was a great beauty? Shouldn’t character actually count for something?
Anyway, likely my last Mitford book for a while.