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7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
Disappointing read, 15 Jul 2000
I became disenchanted with this book while reading the introduction where Dalley states that, although she interviewed Diana Mosley, she was not allowed to quote from any of Mosley's private papers and letters; therefore everything that she quoted came from previously published sources. "Great. Nothing new here," I thought and I was absolutely right.Comprised almost entirely of recycled material, overall the book reads as a fawning Valentine to a woman of dubious character. Probably because she couldn't quote from those private papers Dalley doesn't tell enough about the Mitfords private lives to enable the reader to really understand exactly how all of those children turned out the way they did. (Unity and Diana are the most. . .er, interesting of the group, but not by much.) From her early escape-from-home marriage to the exceptionally rich Bryan Guinness to her peripatetic lifestyle with Mosley after imprisonment, Diana seems shallow, self-serving, self-centered, frivolous, and not nearly as intellectual as Dalley claims. Dalley insists that Diana was terribly spohisticated and bright, yet because we have only a few stories about sparkling parties and clever friends and precious few actual examples of Diana's speaking or writing to judge by, the reader remains unconvinced. Dalley also appears less than objective about her subject: she sees Diana's personal attributes in the nicest possible light, refusing to believe that other, less flattering, conclusions can be drawn by the presented evidence. For instance, Dalley insists that Diana's request to her arresting officers that she be permitted to stop at a chemist to purchase a breast pump on her way to jail proves that Diana is a good parent, yet she skims over the telling fact that in late years the Mosleys travelled throughout the year, often leaving their children behind with schoolmasters, hired help, or, in the case of Max at the age of thirteen, no supervision whatsoever. As written, Diana seems to have no objectivity toward herself and her own actions. Dalley quotes Diana toward the end of her life complaining that her two children from Mosley, Alexander and Max, grew up troubled because she was put in jail while they were toddlers strictly for "marrying Oswald". While this undoubtedly contributed to their problems, she leaves out the fact that her close personal friendship with Adolf Hitler, in addition to her marriage to leader of the British Union of Fascists, might have contributed to her jailing. Indeed, Dalley's minor theme appears to be that Diana was a clever, but unfocused woman until the evil Oswald Mosley entered her life, going so far as to imply that Diana was persuing her relationship with Hitler strictly to further Mosley's ties to European Fascists. Addistionally, after telling the reader (but offering little evidence)that Diana's children grew up troubled, we never find out what happened to any of them. Nicholas Mosley's two books about his parents lives and loves offer a far more objective view on all of them. I wish I'd taken this out of the library rather than bought it. I hoped for much more than I got.
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