Amazon.co.uk Review
Diana Mosley was born Diana Freeman-Mitford, the fourth child of the famously eccentric Lord Redesdale and perhaps the most intellectually brilliant of all the mad, marvellous Mitford sisters. Along with intellect, she was also beautiful, glamorous and wealthy but she seemed to be prepared to sacrifice it all when she met and fell in love with Sir Oswald Mosley, the leader of British fascism. Jan Dalley offers us a fascinating portrait of a complex personality and an entire era in British history and is careful not to confuse Mosley's rather paternalistic, reactionary fascism with the genocidal and murderous variety that was Nazism. Unfortunately, Diana did rather admire Hitler too and has left flattering descriptions of, among other unlikely things, his sense of humour: His imitations of Mussolini were thought particularly droll. Other colourful characters revolve around the periphery of the story: Evelyn Waugh, Lord Berners, Bryan Guinness, the adorable Nancy Mitford. But it is Diana herself who commands our attention, with all her dark ambiguity and charm. --
Christopher Hart
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
Diana Guinness, nee Mitford, left her first husband for the British fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley, for whose glorification of violence, 'dynamism' and 'action' she conceived a violent and irresistible passion. Notorious for her friendship with Hitler, her loathing of Jews and her enthusiastic embrace of fascism, she was imprisoned with Mosley during World War II as a threat to national security. Diana exemplified the predisposition of a certain section of the interwar British upper class to find Nazi violence 'glamorous' and Nazi discipline 'therapeutic'. This biography gives us a sobering, indeed frightening, glimpse of what we might have been in for if Hitler had won the war and installed Oswald Mosley, with his evil consort at his elbow, as Gauleiter of Britain. (Kirkus UK)
Financial Times literary editor Dalley presents this detailed portrait of the charming and elusive Lady Diana Mosleyhighborn society beauty, writer, and fascist.Much has been written about Dianas sisters Unity (infatuated with Hitler), Nancy (the celebrated novelist), and Deborah (the Duchess of Devonshire). But this is the first biography of Diana, the wife of the mercurial and notorious Sir Oswald Mosley (leader of the British Union of Fascists). Still alive and quite unrepentant in her late 80s, Diana in her youth was rather more than a free spirit. Her leaving the wealthy Bryan Guinness to become Mosleys mistress had scandalized London society, true enough. But her late-night chats with Hitler, her frequent appearances at Goebbelss villa, and her schemes to set up a specially built radio station in Germany to propagandize southeast England during the late 1930s attracted the interest of British Intelligence. When the war broke out, she was imprisoned until 1943 and remained under house arrest for the remainder of the conflict. She and her husband flirted with anti-Semitic and right-wing organizations after the war, but reputation, tax exile, and the burdens of aristocratic life limited their political involvements: Oswald would climb back on the horse and run a couple of times for a seat in Parliament, while Diana would edit such terms as fuzzie wuzzies or hottentots out of his political writings on Africa (which Oswald envisioned as the future estate of an united European nation). Dalley argues that Dianas life is an example of the search for a coherence during turbulent times, but she rarely offers any comment on Dianas moral imagination beyond remarks about standing by her man or adhering to the things that mattered most to her. And Dalleys research is compromised (to put it mildly) by Mosleys refusal to grant her access to her unpublished papers and diaries until after her death. A guarded, and frequently routine, presentation of a life that might receive a more searching treatment after it ends. (Kirkus Reviews)
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by Charlotte Mosley
by Jonathan Guinness
by Diana Mosley (Mitford)
by Selina Hastings
by Jessica Mitford
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