The Mitford Girls: The Biography of an Extraordinary Family

Publisher and industry reviews

Jacket review

In The Mitford Girls, Mary S Lovell cordially brings together the varied personalities of an eccentric British blue-eyed sisterhood that spanned the 20th century. Born of "minor provincial aristocracy", as the late Lord Longford put it, the six Mitford sisters and one brother came to epitomise the Bright Young Thing generation of London society, hosting the extravagant, giddy parties lampooned by Evelyn Waugh in Vile Bodies. Nancy, the literary dry wit, was herself to write several successful novels, most notably Love in a Cold Climate and The Pursuit of Love, which followed the family prescription of fact doused with fiction. Notoriety, though, came elsewhere. Diana, beautiful and strong-willed, left Bryan Guinness the month Hitler came to power in Germany to be with dashing British fascist leader Oswald Mosley, whom she eventually married. A meeting of hearts and beliefs, they stayed together through internment during the war, and the years after. Tragedy came with the manic public fervour of the unfortunately named Unity for Hitler and the German Nazi Party. She met the Fuhrer on 140 occasions between 1935 and 1939, achieving a rare intimacy, but when war broke out she shot herself in a vain bid to end her life, which left her disabled for the rest of her life. Decca was the leftwing antithesis of Unity, who wrote The American Way of Death and Hons and Rebels, the latter every bit as witty as Nancy's work. The other siblings--Pam, wooed by John Betjeman, Debo, who became Duchess of Devonshire, and Tom--receive fairly scant attention in an account understandably dominated by pre-1945 events, when much of the British aristocracy flirted with fascism. In abstaining from judgement, Lovell, who writes fluently and never loses sight of her charges, comes close to underplaying the Mitfords' more unsavoury views and behaviour, though her task is inevitably fraught with negotiation, particularly as Debo and Diana are still alive. The diverse energies of this multi-plumed brood, who in adult life were rarely in the same room, make them hard to contain in one book, and perhaps require more distance to do justice to the themes, and disparities, of their extraordinary lives.' - David Vincent, Amazon.co.uk 'In the first book devoted to the whole tribe, Lovell does sterling work in revising our Nancy-made image of her parents in her novel THE PURSUIT OF LOVE' - Sunday Times

UK Kirkus review

Almost as many books seem to have been written about the Mitfords as about the Bloomsbury circle; and here is another, this time about all six daughters of the eccentric Lord Redesdale. Lovell has had the co-operation of the two surviving sisters, Debo (Duchess of Devonshire) and Diana (widow of the British fascist Oswald Mosley) - perhaps rather surprisingly given, since previous books about the family have all too often led to disapproval and disassociation. This is a very thorough piece of work, and although - because each of the sisters deserves a biography of her own (and several have had one) - it necessarily cuts a few corners, it offers a very vivid picture of a really astonishing family. The two polar figures of the family were Diana and Jessica (Decca) - the former and her husband became hate-figures during World War II because of their fascist sympathies, while Decca went off to fight against the fascists in the Spanish Civil War, and was later thoroughly persecuted in the USA for her communist beliefs. Of the other four, Nancy became an exceptionally entertaining writer, Pamela was the beauty of the family, Debo married the Duke of Devonshire, while Unity (whose other forename was, prophetically, Valkyrie) became fixated on Hitler (one of whose favourite women she was), shot herself in the head when war was declared, and was lovingly protected by the family until her death in 1948. Not all of the sisters were perhaps sufficiently notable to merit a biography; but the effect of them as a family remains astonishing and memorable. Incidentally, the author does much to correct the picture of the family given in Nancy's splendidly funny books - 'Farve', in particular, is clearly a caricature of Lord Redesdale, and it is good to have the scales properly balanced. (Kirkus UK)

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