Mystery of the Mitford sisters who came of age between the wars

Their aspirations, their lifestyles and their politics bear little relation to anything a modern woman would lay claim to. And yet, their fascinating, shocking, sometimes scandalous story of wildly differing politics, elopement and adultery, continues to fascinate. Exactly why that should be is a question I’ve spent a fair amount of time pondering, having written three novels with the Mitford sisters at their heart. 

The Mitford Murders series mixes fact and fiction, using the siblings to draw readers into a time and place – upper-class households between the wars – with fictional protagonists and events that embroil the family in solving crimes.

If you don’t know who they are, here’s a quick rundown in descending order of birth: Nancy, Pamela, Diana, Unity, Jessica and Deborah. 

There was also a brother, Tom, born before Diana, who was perhaps inevitably, overshadowed by his sisters, and was killed in action in 1945. 

The girls came of age in the inter-war years, and each came to represent a different facet of that period of tumultuous political upheaval and decadence. 

They were born upper class, but their father only became the 2nd Baron Redesdale after his eldest brother was killed in the First World War. The family was not poor, but never considered itself rich either, with their mother selling eggs to pay the governess’s wages. 

With an eccentric upbringing – brilliantly characterised in Nancy’s novels Love In A Cold Climate and The Pursuit Of Love – though viewed through our 21st-century eyes it’s hard to separate true eccentricity from some of the norms of the day. 

Whatever went on in their childhoods – a subject upon which all the sisters never entirely agreed – it certainly created six highly individual personalities. 

Nancy was a novelist and satirist of her class, while remaining completely of it; friends with many of the leading literary figures of the day with whom she gossiped while working at Heywood Hill bookshop in London’s Mayfair (it’s still there). 

Pamela was the rock of the six, calm and unflappable, fond of horses, dogs and housework. 

Diana was a famous beauty, marrying Bryan Guinness, an heir to the brewing fortune and future Baron Moyne, when she was just 18 years old, only to leave him a few years later for Sir Oswald Mosley, the leader of the British Union of Fascists. 

After his wife died, he and Diana married in Goebbel’s drawing room. Hitler was a witness. In spite of her consequent ostracization from society, she never renounced her fascist beliefs, despite three years’ internment during the Second World War. 

Of the same mould, Unity travelled to Germany pre-war and became obsessed with Hitler, stalking the restaurant he lunched at for 10 months until he invited her to join his table. 

She was soon a part of his inner circle, announced herself a “Jew-hater” and, when war broke out, tried to kill herself in the English Gardens in Munich. 

Shooting herself in the head with a pistol given to her by Hitler for her protection, she survived but lived her remaining years with the mental capacity of a 12-year-old. 

Jessica eloped with a cousin, Esmond Romilly, a communist only just back from the fighting in the Spanish Civil War. 

Like Diana, she espoused her husband’s views with an unshakeable will; Esmond was killed in the war but she went on to marry American radical Leftist Robert Treuhaft. 

Last was Deborah, of whom everyone was disappointed she had not been born a boy and it was said that no-one except the family nanny even looked at her for three months. As a debutante she fell in love with Andrew Cavendish. 

When his older brother was killed in the war, he inherited the Devonshire dukedom complete with the 175-room Chatsworth, along with death duties it took them 24 years to pay off. Debo as she was known turned the house into a profitable business and became, ultimately, the most popular and perhaps nicest of the six. 

So far, so compelling. 

But not, you might say, entirely people you can relate to, either? 

Look at the newspaper stories about the Mitfords – “whenever I see the words ‘Peer’s daughter’ in a headline I know it’s going to be something about one of you children,” their mother Sydney complained – and you find romance, heartbreak, sadness, jealousy; the full gamut of emotions. 

This is partly thanks to the fact Nancy, Diana, Jessica and Deborah all wrote either closely-autobiographical novels or memoirs. But mostly it is due to the large number of letters they wrote to each other. 

Diana’s daughter-in-law, Charlotte Mosley, published an 800-page book of Letters Between Six Sisters that represented a mere five per cent of the siblings’ total correspondence. 

It is these letters that throw up their true humanity and vulnerability – they had several nicknames for each other plus made-up words only they understood (Jessica and Unity as children communicated in a whole secret language, Boudledidge). 

For the biographer it’s glorious material. Yet during their lifetimes, before their letters became public, it would have been hard to know any of this. All had upper lips stiffer than any starched collar. But when they put their pens to paper, there are glimpses of the softness beneath. 

Nancy wrote movingly of her deep longing for children (she had two miscarriages before a hysterectomy); Debo gave birth to six babies but saw just three of them grow up; Jessica’s baby girl died of measles at five months old and her son was killed in an accident at the age of 10 (though she wrote almost nothing of this later tragedy). 

For her part, Diana had to leave her 11-week old baby and three other sons behind when imprisoned during the war. She and Mosley were held as ‘dangerous persons’ to the realm, Nancy having given evidence to the government against her sister. 

Unity, of course was wrecked by her attempted suicide, and her mother was left exhausted by caring for her daughter. 

In other words, while obviously buffeted and influenced by politics, rotten lovers and husbands, while the pain they caused elsewhere was often unforgivable, beneath the surface they were every bit as human as the rest of us. 

There really is no hierarchy of tragedy, no ‘privileged pain’. A heart breaks painfully whether we are born with silver spoons or not. 

But I think the fascination in the Mitfords lies in the fact they were also so entirely of themselves. We are unlikely to see their kind again. 

We might be grateful in some ways but in an age when every individual sees themselves as of zoological interest with endless social media accounts and selfies, the sisters, who cared little for what anyone else thought and ploughed on regardless, are worthy of a second viewing today. 

I recommend you take a look. 

• The Mitford Scandal by Jessica Fellowes (Sphere, £14.99). For your copy with free UK delivery, call Express Bookshop on 01872 562310, or send a cheque/PO payable to Express Bookshop: Jessica Fellowes Offer, PO Box 200, Falmouth TR11 4WJ or visit expressbookshop.co.uk