The Mitford Affair

The famous Mitford sisters (six in total) were the daughters of David Freeman-Mitford, 2nd Baron Redesdale and his wife Sydney Bowles. The wealthy and aristocratic Mitford family were members of the British social elite class and the six women were prominent figures in British social and political life throughout their lives. Not only did they make well-connected marriages and/or engage in sexual affairs with powerful members of British and European society, but their often controversial personal and political choices, lifestyles, and careers influenced the course of European public discourse during and after the 1930s. The Mitford family was strongly divided in their political and nationalist beliefs and are often viewed as a microcosm of the tensions in interwar Britain. Today, the Mitford sisters are considered historically significant as a social study of the time—especially of the agency and influence of women.

Nancy Mitford (1904-1973), one of the central characters in this novel, was the eldest Mitford child. She was a novelist, biographer, and journalist, known for her left-leaning politics. Her early novels attracted little notice although her later semi-autobiographical works, The Pursuit of Love (1945) and Love in a Cold Climate were acclaimed. Nancy Mitford’s romantic life was troubled. She wished for marriage and children, the traditional life path for women of her time and class. After a longstanding but failed affair with Hamish St Clair Erskine throughout her twenties, she married Peter Rodd in 1933. The marriage was unsuccessful. Nancy experienced miscarriages and had no living children. She found love later in life with a French politician named Gaston Palewski and—although he was serially unfaithful to her—she settled in France until her death. Nancy was politically left-wing and staunchly against fascism and Hitler. She is known to have cooperated with MI5 when they investigated her sister Diana and wrote journalism in support of liberal European and anti-fascist movements.

Diana Mitford’s (1910-2003) early life followed the expected pattern for a beautiful woman of her time and class: In 1929, she married the extremely wealthy Bryan Guinness, heir to the barony of Moyne. The couple had a huge fortune, multiple properties, lived an extravagant aristocratic lifestyle and had two sons. In 1932, Diana met Sir Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists, a married man, and known womanizer. They began an affair, and she left her husband for him, although he would not leave his wife. Diana’s divorce and affair caused a public scandal and a breach with most of her family. After his wife died in 1934, Mosely conducted numerous other affairs alongside Diana, and the couple were not married until 1936, at a secret wedding in in Germany. Diana’s social connections, personal beauty, and political activity were of great use to Mosley in furthering his career as a fascist politician; MI5 documents at the time stated that she was far cleverer and more successful than Mosley. Diana introduced Mosley to Hitler and the couple became intimate friends with high-ranking Nazis. In 1939, Diana was considered a security risk and interned for the duration of the war, first in prison and then under house arrest, as depicted in the last chapters of this novel. After the war, Diana became a writer for various women’s magazines and published an autobiography A Life of Contrasts in 1977. She remained a controversial figure throughout her life, remaining a holocaust denier, open supporter of Hitler, and unrepentant fascist until her death in 2003.

Unity Mitford (1914-1948) is the most controversial member of the Mitford family. Unity moved to Germany in the lead-up to World War II as a result of her infatuation with Hitler and Nazism. She was rumored to have had an affair with Hitler and her rivalry with Eva Braun, Hitler’s longstanding mistress, is independently documented. She was certainly part of his inner circle for the years 1934-1939 and introduced Diana to Hitler. She fully embraced all tenets of Nazism, including Germany’s military expansion and antisemitism, publishing virulent antisemitic views. Her patriotic loyalties appeared to be divided between Britain and Germany before the war, but she wished for fascism to spread across the whole of Europe. Although her social status and medical condition protected her somewhat, Unity was the object of public scrutiny and criticism in Britain, especially after the outbreak of war in 1939. Her semi-reclusive life following her attempt to die by suicide gave rise to much unfounded speculation, including that she was the mother of Hitler’s child. Unity never fully recovered from her injuries and died aged 34, of meningitis caused by her bullet wound.