Diana Mitford

Omtale

Her own sister, Nancy Mitford, called her 'a dangerous person'. Diana Mitford was more beautiful than the most celebrated of 20th century female icons – Garbo, Jackie Kennedy, the other Diana – and far more compelling. She was a mix of steel-strength and passivity; as dynamic as any modern feminist yet a trad wife. With her charisma and brains, Diana could have had anything, including a career, as did her sisters Nancy and Jessica. Instead, she gave up everything, including a seemingly perfect marriage and two sons, to marry Oswald Mosley, the head of the British Union of Fascists. She herself became an unrepentant Nazi sympathizer. Along with Mosley, she was interned during World War II as a threat to national security. After the war, she lived a life of gilded exile, shuttling between their homes in Paris and Ireland, staunchly defending his politics. She befriended the Duchess of Windsor, also suspected of Nazi leanings, and even wrote her biography. The notion of regret was not one that she publicly entertained. But did she really not regret her decision to marry Mosley and the more than three years in prison, his indifferent treatment of their two sons, and even his adoring mother’s refusal to acknowledge her existence for twenty years? Who was Diana Mitford, truly?Based on extensive new material, including the author’s own interview with Diana Mitford before her death in 2003, Laura Thompson tackles her most challenging subject to date.