Take Six Girls: The Lives of the Mitford Sisters (62 page)

in the Canadian Air Force 255–8

character 182–3, 186–7

and Churchill 2, 35, 256, 258–9

death 258–60, 278

elopement with Jessica Mitford 2, 7–8, 41–2, 180, 182–90

and marriage 188–9

and Jessica in Rotherhithe 198–201

Out of Bounds
182–3

politics 148, 158, 199–201

and Tom Mitford 284

in the USA 211, 224, 255–8

Romilly, Nellie 35, 63, 183, 186, 224, 255, 258

Rothschild, Nica 163

Roy, André (Desplats-Pilter, Roy André) 254, 270, 290, 291, 292, 294

Ruskin, John 98

Russell, Bertrand 333

Rutland Gate house 81, 166, 185, 203–4, 283

St Clair-Erskine, Hamish 68, 70, 104–7, 120, 121, 150, 163, 278, 294

Salisbury, Lord 85, 86

Sassoon, Sir Philip 129

Sayers, Dorothy L.

Gaudy Night
95

Schirach, Baldur von 171

Seafield, Nina 97, 108

Second World War

and Deborah 43–4

liberation of the death camps 280, 283

Mosley and the BU 222–7

outbreak of 204–5

possibility of negotiated peace with Germany 224

Sewell, Mary 150

Shaw, George Bernard 140, 273

Shell, Henrietta (Tello) 36, 38

Simolin, Rudi von 205, 209, 336

Sitwell, Georgia 131

Sitwell, Osbert 273

skating 72–3

Smiley, Sir Hugh 101, 105, 107, 294

Soviet Union 178–9

Spanish Civil War 9, 17, 50, 179, 183

Spark, Muriel 62, 124

Speer, Albert 205

Stalin, Joseph 178–9

The
Stanleys of Alderley
(Nancy Mitford) 34, 203

Strachey, Lytton 111, 120, 125–7, 147–8

Strathmore, Lord 21

Streicher, Julius 174, 175, 312

Sutro, John 108, 109, 146, 163

Swinbrook

cottage at 218

St Mary’s churchyard 13

Swinbrook House 4, 14–15, 78–80, 81

Nancy’s friends at 107–8, 111

sale of 175–6

Swinton, Lord 229, 230

Tales of Old Japan
(Bertram Mitford) 31

Tommasi, Giuditta 336

Toynbee, Philip 182, 190, 201

Treuhaft, Robert 261, 262–3, 266

Vile Bodies
(Waugh) 106, 110–11, 112

Vogue
36, 103

Voltaire in Love
(Nancy Mitford) 35

Wagner, Adolf 209–10

Wagner, Richard 32, 147

Wagner, Winifred 32, 167–8, 169, 194

Wait for Me!
(Mitford, Deborah) 21

Watney, Oliver 99, 124, 264

Waugh, Evelyn 2, 10, 16, 71, 81, 102, 109, 185–6, 197, 292

‘An Open Letter’ 29–30, 308

Brideshead Revisited
15, 18, 97, 108, 156–7

death 333

Decline and Fall
110

and Diana 112–13, 120, 247, 297–8

A
Handful of Dust
144

and Nancy 298, 313

on Peter Rodd 150

Vile Bodies
106, 110–11, 112

Wellington, Duke of 6, 191

Widemann, Erich 164

Wigs on the Green
(Nancy Mitford) 115, 149, 151–3, 157, 158, 165, 180, 190, 222, 247, 250, 302

Wootton Lodge, Staffordshire 176, 197, 237, 243

Wright, Margaret 218, 282, 313, 325

Yorke, Henry (Henry Green) 111, 112

Zinoviev Letter 5

Picture Acknowledgements

Page 1: Lord and Lady Redesdale (©
Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth. Reproduced with kind permission by Chatsworth Settlement Trustees
); Bertie Mitford (
Mary Evans Picture Library
); Thomas Bowles (
Beresford
/
Getty Images
)

Pages 2–3: Nancy (©
National Portrait Gallery
); Pamela (©
National Portrait Gallery
); Diana (
Popperfoto/Getty Images
); Unity (
Illustrated London News Ltd/Mary Evans Picture Library
); Jessica (
Illustrated London News Ltd/Mary Evans Picture Library
); Deborah (©
National Portrait Gallery
)

Page 4: Batsford Park (©
foto-zone/Alamy
); Asthall Manor (
Country Life Picture Library
)

Page 5: Swinbrook House (
Tim Graham/Getty Images
); Unity and Jessica (
Getty Images/Evening Standard
)

Page 6: Bryan Guinness and Diana (
Illustrated London News Ltd/Mary Evans Picture Library
); Diana and Nancy (
Illustrated London News Ltd/Mary Evans Picture Library
)

Page 7: Nancy on the cover of
The
Tatler
(
Illustrated London News Ltd/Mary Evans Picture Library
)

Page 8: Oswald Mosley (
Daily Herald Archive; Mary Evans Picture Library
); Unity in Munich (
Mary Evans/Sueddeutsche Zeitung Photo
)

Page 9: Deborah at a point-to-point (
Central Press/Getty Images
); Unity in 1938 (
Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
)

Page 10:
Partout
article (
Roger-Viollet/Topfoto
); Unity returns to Britain (
Fred Ramage/Stringer/Getty Images
)

Page 11: Esmond Romilly and Jessica (
Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
)

Page 12: Deborah on her wedding day (
Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
)

Page 13: Diana and Oswald Mosley under house arrest (
Popperfoto/Getty Images
); Unity’s cottage (
Laura Thompson
)

Page 14: Nancy in Paris (
Philippe Le Tellier/Paris Match/Getty Images
)

Page 15: Deborah in 1954 (
Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
); Robert Treuhaft and Jessica (
Jon Brenneis/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images
)

Page 16: Swinbrook churchyard (
Laura Thompson
); The Mitford children (
Illustrated London News Ltd/Bridgeman Images
)

About
Take Six Girls

The eldest was a razor-sharp novelist of upper-class manners; the second was loved by John Betjeman; the third was a fascist who married Oswald Mosley; the fourth idolized Hitler and shot herself in the head when Britain declared war on Germany; the fifth was a member of the American Communist Party; the sixth became Duchess of Devonshire.

They were the Mitford sisters: Nancy, Pamela, Diana, Unity, Jessica and Deborah. Born into country-house privilege, they became prominent as ‘bright young things’ in the high society of interwar London. Then, as the shadows crept over 1930s Europe, the stark – and very public – differences in their outlooks came to symbolize the political polarities of a dangerous decade.

The intertwined stories of their lives – recounted in masterly fashion by Laura Thompson – hold up a revelatory mirror to upper-class English life before and after the Second World War.

Reviews

L
IFE
IN
A
C
OLD
C
LIMATE

‘Well-nigh perfect.’

Lady Diana Mosley

‘A brilliant study, original, perceptive, passionate and very nearly as enjoyable to read as the subject’s own novels.’

Selina Hastings,
Sunday Telegraph

‘Thompson, like Mitford, writes in a witty, humorous and touchingly personal manner.’

Daily Express

‘This book is a gem: fresh, intelligent and assured.’

Sunday Times

A D
IFFERENT
C
LASS
OF
M
URDER

‘Laura Thompson’s wonderful book challenges our assumptions about the disappearance of Lord Lucan after the murder of his children’s nanny. She shines new light on his background, his weak obsessive character, his terrible marriage, the supposed naivety of Sandra Rivett and the ease with which myths and truths elide.’

Diana Souhami, author of
Murder at Wrotham Hill

A
GATHA
C
HRISTIE
: A
N
E
NGLISH
M
YSTERY

‘Laura Thompson has certainly written the last word on Agatha Christie. Her book is a superb piece of biography.’

Charles Osborne
, Literary Review

‘This splendid account of [Christie’s] life and work is unlikely to be bettered.’

Melanie McDonagh,
Evening Standard

‘The best biographies are labours of love and this fascinating book is just that.’

Jessica Mann,
Sunday Telegraph

‘Laura Thompson’s outstanding biography... is a pretty much perfect capturing of a life.’

Kate Mosse, Book of the Year, 2007

‘A triumphant success.’

A. N. Wilson,
Daily Mail

About Laura Thompson

L
AURA
T
HOMPSON
is author of Somerset Maugham Award-winning
The Dogs: A Personal History of Greyhound Racing
(1995),
Newmarket
(2000),
Life in a Cold Climate: A Biography of Nancy Mitford
(2003) and
Agatha Christie: An English Mystery
(2007)

Also by Laura Thompson

Life in a Cold Climate

Nancy Mitford was, in the words of her sister Lady Diana Mosley, ‘very, very complex’. Her highly autobiographical early novels, the biographies and novels of her more mature French period, her journalism, and the vast body of letters to her family, friends such as Evelyn Waugh, and to the great love of her life, Gaston Palewski, all tell an intriguing story. Drawing from these, as well as from conversations with people who knew Mitford well – notably her sisters Diana and Deborah – Laura Thompson has fashioned a portrait of a contradictory and courageous woman. Nancy Mitford expressed anti-feminist views while living a life of financial and emotional independence; believed profoundly in marriage and family and yet grew to value work and solitude; was quintessentially English yet only truly blossomed after her move to France.