The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family (74 page)

27
OSU/1020, JM to ER, 8 September 1940.

28
OSU/1031, ER to JM, 11 September 1940.

29
OSU/1029, Max Beaverbrook to Nellie Romilly, 19 November 1940.

30
Mosley, Nicholas,
Beyond the Pale
(Secker & Warburg, 1983), p. 443.

31
Winston Churchill thought this likely. See notes taken at a War Cabinet meeting 28 May 1940, in which Churchill discussed his decision against possible negotiations with Hitler: ‘“we should become a slave state, though a British Government which would be Hitler’s puppet would undoubtedly be set up under
Mosley
or some such person” . . . no one expressed a flicker of dissent’. See Hugh Dalton, The Fateful Years (Frederick Muller, 1957), p. 336.

32
Dalley, Jan,
Diana Mosley
(Faber & Faber, 2000), p. 267.

33
Quoted in TV documentary Churchill vs. Hitler: The Duel, Channel 4, 8 May 2000.

34
DM to the author, January 2001.

35
Major Vidkun Quisling, leader of the Norwegian Fascists, proclaimed a puppet government on the day Norway was invaded by the Germans.

36
DM to the author, January 2001.

37
BBC2 programme, 2000,
The Age of Nazism – Tourists of the Revolution
.

38
Skidelsky, Robert,
Mosley
(Macmillan, 1981), p. 447.

39
Ibid
.

40
Hubert Gladwyn Jebb (later 1st Baron Gladwyn) at the Ministry of Economic Warfare, 1940–42.

41
20 June 1940, in
Love from Nancy
, p. 132.

42
The House of Mitford
, p. 492.

43
Ibid
., p. 493.

44
Ibid
. Jonathan Guinness points out that the statement regarding the profits of the radio station was incorrect. Half the profits were contracted to the German radio company, which was also involved in the venture.

45
DM to the author, January 2001.

46
A Life of Contrasts
, p. 213.

47
Ibid
., p. 189.

48
OSU/1697, SR to JM, October 1940.

49
Love from Nancy
, p. 139.

50
JM to VH, 1 October 1940, in
ibid
., p. 140.

51
26 December 1940, in
ibid
., p. 144.

52
Ibid
.

53
OSU/1707, NM to JM, 4 July 1940.

54
OSU/1697, SR to JM 26 September 1940.

55
OSU/1700, referred to in JM, to SR, 2 April 1960.

56
3 March 1941, in
Love from Nancy
, p. 147.

57
André Roy was his
nomme de guerre
. His real name was Roy André Desplats-Pilter.

58
Mrs Rattenbury was a murderess.

59
OSU/1559, DD to JM, 6 May 1940.

60
Ibid
., DD to JM, 7 October 1940. Joseph Kennedy departed from London on 23 October 1940 at the height of the Blitz saying that he had the greatest respect for Londoners.

61
Lees-Milne, James,
Prophesying Peace
(John Murray, 1997), p. 345.

62
Collier, Peter and Horowitz, David,
The Kennedys
(Secker & Warburg), p. 94,

63
OSU/1679, ‘Nannie’ to JM, 15 September. Philip Toynbee, Esmond’s old friend, was also at Sandhurst at the same time.

64
OSU/1697, SR to JM, 7 October 1940.

65
NM to VH 3 March 1941, in
Love from Nancy
, p. 147

66
The House of Mitford
, p. 581.

Chapter 15: Gains and Losses, 1941–3

1
In
Hons and Rebels
Decca says a nine-bed ward, but in her letters to Esmond she describes it, and draws a diagram of a five-bedded ward.

2
OSU/1648, JM to Anne Horne, 18 October 1984.

3
A Spanish grandee who left her home and family to join the Republicans fighting Franco. See
In Place of Splendour – the Biography of a Spanish Woman
(Michael Joseph, 1940).

4
OSU/1698, SR to JM, 15 April 1941.

5
Ibid
., 18 April 1941.

6
Madeau Stewart, interview with the author, Burford, spring 2000.

7
OSU, DD to JM, 1959 (undated).

8
DM to the author, January 2001.

9
Ingram, Kevin,
Rebel
(Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1985), p. 217.

10
OSU/1030, Virginia Durr to ER, 1 August 1941.

11
OSU/1029, 3 September 1941.

12
Ibid
., ER, 6 September 1941.

13
OSU/1030, ER to JM, 11 November 1941.

14
OSU/1031, JM to ER, 1 December 1941.

15
Ibid
., Chief of Air Staff to JM (extract), 2 December 1941.

16
Durr, Virginia Foster,
Outside the Magic Circle
(University of Alabama Press, 1990), p. 141.

17
OSU/1029, Wing Commander Ronald Clark, O/C, 58 Squadron Linton on Ouse, York, 4 December 1941.

18
Churchill, Winston S.,
The Second World War
, vol. III,
The Grand Alliance
(Cassell, 1950), pp. 539–40.

19
Moran, Lord,
Churchill – The Struggle for Survival
(Constable, 1966), p. 13.

20
Robert Treuhaft, interview with the author, San Francisco, October 1999.

21
OSU/1794, JM notes. Also OSU/1707, Nellie Romilly to SR, 19 March 1942.

22
Pearson, John,
Citadel of the Heart
(Macmillan, 1991), p. 306.

23
OSU, Romilly file, Nellie Romilly to SR, February 1942.

24
OSU/1032, Virginia Durr to SR, c. February 1942.

25
Lees-Milne, James,
Prophesying Peace
(John Murray, 1997), p. 349.

26
Outside the Magic Circle
, p. 141.

27
OSU/1032, Virginia Durr to SR, c. February 1942. When Lady Redesdale replied to this she diplomatically repeated several phrases used by Mrs Durr, to let her know, without saying so, that her letter had been safely received.

28
Rosemary, Mrs Richard Bailey, interview with the author, Westwell, March 2000.

29
CHP, JM to SR, 22 February 1942.

30
NM to DM, 22 November 1941, in Mosley, Charlotte,
Love from Nancy
(Hodder & Stoughton, 1993), p. 151.

31
NM to DM, 24 August 1942, in
ibid
., p. 155.

32
The shop still exists in Curzon Street. Today, a ‘blue plaque’ commemorates Nancy’s association with the building.

33
Lees-Milne, James,
Ancestral Voices
(John Murray, 1975), p. 27.

34
Ibid
., p. 26.

35
Ibid
., p. 247. Anthony and Christopher, playmates of the Mitford children, were killed early in the war. Timothy’s conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1943 while in a PoW camp is said to have distressed the Baileys ‘more than the death in action of their two other sons’.

36
Ibid
., p. 201. The ‘autobiography’ became the basis of the novel
The Pursuit of Love
.

37
Ibid
., p. 343.

38
Ibid
., p. 351.

39
Ibid
., p. 249.

40
Prophesying Peace
, p. 312.

41
Hastings, Selina,
Nancy Mitford
(Hamish Hamilton, 1985), p. 144

42
Mitford, Nancy,
The Pursuit of Love
(Hamish Hamilton, 1945), p. 189.

43
Hastings,
Nancy Mitford
, p. 149.

44
Love from Nancy
, p. 162.

Chapter 16: Women at War, 1943–4

1
Churchill, Winston S.,
The Second World War
, vol. III,
The Grand Alliance
(Cassell, 1950), p. 627

2
Ibid
., p. 750

3
Mosley, Diana,
A Life of Contrasts
(Hamish Hamilton, 1977), p. 192.

4
Ibid
.

5
DM, interview with the author, June 2000.

6
Ibid
.

7
Mosley, Nicholas,
Beyond the Pale
(Secker & Warburg, 1983), p. 483.

8
OSU/1698, JM to SR, 11 April 1943.

9
Mitford, Jessica,
A Fine Old Conflict
(Michael Joseph, 1977), p. 37.

10
OSU 1742, RT to Aranka, 28 December 1942.

11
Ibid
., 8 January 1943.

12
A Fine Old Conflict
, p. 41.

13
Ibid
., p. 46.

14
Called ‘Mrs Tibbs’ in
A Fine Old Conflict
.

15
A Fine Old Conflict
, p. 46.

16
OSU/1698, JM to SR, 16 March 1943.

17
Ibid
., 11 April 1943.

18
Even as an adult Dinky is unmistakably Mitford. I was easily able to identify her from among a jumbo jet-load of passengers when I first met her, merely because I was familiar with photographs of her Mitford aunts at the same age. However, she told me that when she was about nineteen she was walking in New York one day when she noticed a man walking towards her and staring as though transfixed. He passed by, then turned and came back to her. ‘I say,’ he said in an English voice, ‘are you in any way related to Esmond Romilly?’ She replied that Esmond was her father. ‘Thank God,’ he said. ‘I thought I was seeing a ghost.’