Take Six Girls: The Lives of the Mitford Sisters (50 page)

Deborah

Batsford Park, first home to the Mitford family, built by Bertie and sold in 1919.

Asthall Manor, where life was ‘all summers’.

Swinbrook House, built by David, hated by all his children except Deborah.

Unity Mitford, aged eight, and her younger sister Jessica, at Asthall.

Diana in 1930, photographed in Hyde Park with her first husband, Bryan Guinness. Her wolfhound, Pilgrim, ate raw meat straight from her hands.

Diana and Nancy, white and black queen of the Mitford girls, in 1932.

Nancy on the cover of
The Tatler
in 1933, on the occasion of the announcement of her engagement to Peter Rodd.

Sir Oswald Mosley in his pomp, 1936.

Unity in the 1930s, dressed in the female uniform of Mosley’s British Union movement, talks to an SS Colonel outside the Brown House (Nazi Party headquarters) in Munich.

Deborah in her favoured sportswoman mode, at a point-to-point in 1938 with the Hon. Pamela Herman (
left
) and Lady Margaret Ogilvy.

Unity in 1938.

A 1939 article in
Partout
magazine speculating on the fate of ‘Unity Mitford: the Führer’s Muse’. Unity’s name appeared constantly in the British and overseas press.