The family became particularly known in the 1930s and later for the six Mitford sisters, great-great-great-granddaughters of William Mitford, and the daughters of David Freeman-Mitford, 2nd Baron Redesdale, and his wife Sydney Bowles.[a] They were celebrated and at times scandalous figures, who were described by The Times journalist Ben Macintyre as "Diana the Fascist, Jessica the Communist, Unity the Hitler-lover; Nancy the Novelist; Deborah the Duchess and Pamela the unobtrusive poultry connoisseur".[2]
Nancy Mitford (28 November 1904 – 30 June 1973) married Peter Rodd, whom she subsequently divorced, and had a longstanding relationship with French politician and statesman Gaston Palewski. She lived in France for much of her adult life. She wrote many novels, including the semi-autobiographical The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate. She was also a biographer of historical figures, including the Sun King.
Pamela "Pam" Mitford (25 November 1907 – 12 April 1994) was called "Woman" by her siblings.[3]John Betjeman, who for a time was in love with her, referred to her as the "Rural Mitford". She married and later divorced millionaire physicist Derek Jackson, and spent much of the remainder of her life living with Giuditta Tommasi (died 1993), an Italian horsewoman.[4]
Thomas "Tom" Mitford (2 January 1909 – 30 March 1945), the only son, was educated at Eton, where he had an affair with James Lees-Milne.[5] He later had a lengthy affair with Austrian Jewish dancer Tilly Losch during her marriage to Edward James. According to Jessica's letters, Thomas supported British fascism and was posted to the Burma campaign after he had refused to fight in Europe.[6] He died in action.
Unity Mitford (8 August 1914 – 28 May 1948) was known as "Bobo" or "Boud" to her siblings. Her adulation of, and friendship with, Adolf Hitler was widely publicised. She shot herself in the head just hours after Britain declared war on Germany.[6] Her suicide attempt failed but left her with brain damage for the rest of her life. In 1944 her family sent her to the Scottish islet of Inch Kenneth, where she lived out the war.[7] She died of pneumococcal meningitis at West Highland Cottage Hospital, Oban.
Jessica "Decca" Mitford (11 September 1917 – 22 July 1996), unlike the rest of her family, was a communist. She eloped with Esmond Romilly to Spain to participate in the Civil War; they subsequently moved to the United States, and Esmond died in action in the Second World War. She remained in the U.S. most of her adult life, where she married Robert Treuhaft and was a member of the American Communist Party until 1958. She wrote several volumes of memoirs and several volumes of polemical investigation, including the best-selling The American Way of Death (1963) about the funeral industry. She was the grandmother of James Forman Jr. and Chaka Forman, sons of the African-American civil rights leader James Forman by her daughter Constancia Romilly.
The sisters and their brother Thomas were the children of David Freeman-Mitford, 2nd Baron Redesdale, and his wife Sydney, the daughter of Thomas Bowles. To their children, they were known as "Farve" and "Muv", respectively. David and Sydney married in 1904. The family homes changed from Batsford House to Asthall Manor beside the River Windrush in Oxfordshire, and then Swinbrook Cottage nearby, with a house at Rutland Gate in London.[9] They also lived in a cottage in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, which they used as a summer residence.[10] The siblings grew up in an aristocratic country house with emotionally distant parents and a large household with numerous servants; this family dynamic was not unusual for upper-class families of the time. The parents disregarded formal education of women of the family, and they were expected to marry at a young age to a financially well-off husband. The children had a private language called "Boudledidge" (/ˈboʊdəldɪdʒ/), and each had a different nickname for the others.
On the outbreak of the Second World War, their political views came into sharper relief. "Farve" remained a conservative who had long favoured the Neville Chamberlain's approach of appeasing Germany, but once Britain declared war on Germany, he returned to being an anti-German British patriot, while "Muv" continued her fascist sympathies and usually supported her fascist children. The couple separated in 1943 as a result of this conflict. Nancy, a moderate socialist, worked in London during the Blitz and informed on her fascist siblings to the British authorities.[11] Pamela remained seemingly non-political, although according to her sister Nancy, Pamela and Derek Jackson were virulent anti-Semites verbally during World War II who had called for all Jews in England to be killed, and also wanted an early end to the war with Germany before England lost any more money.[11]
Tom, a fascist, refused to fight Germany but volunteered to fight against Imperial Japan; he was killed in action in Burma in 1945. Diana, also a fascist, married to Sir Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists, was imprisoned in London from May 1940 until November 1943 under Defence Regulation 18B. Unity, fanatically devoted to Hitler and Nazism, was distraught over Britain's war declaration against Germany on 3 September 1939, and tried to commit suicide later that day by shooting herself in the head. She failed in the suicide attempt, but suffered brain damage that eventually led to her early death in 1948. Jessica, a communist, had moved to the US, but her husband Esmond Romilly, a Republican veteran from the Spanish Civil War who volunteered for the Royal Canadian Air Force in World War II, died in 1941 when his bomber developed mechanical problems over the North Sea and went down.[6] In numerous letters Jessica said that her daughter Constancia received a pension from the Canadian government after Esmond's death until she turned 18.[6] The strong political rift between Jessica and Diana left them estranged from 1936 until their deaths, although they did speak to each other in 1973, as their eldest sister Nancy was on her deathbed. Aside from Jessica and Diana's estrangement, the sisters kept in frequent contact with each other in the decades after World War II. The sisters were prolific letter-writers, and a substantial body of correspondence still exists, principally letters between them.[2]
The daughters were the subject of a 1981 musical, The Mitford Girls, by Caryl Brahms and Ned Sherrin, and of a song, "The Mitford Sisters", by Luke Haines.
A fictional family based on the Mitford sisters features prominently in Jo Walton's 2007 novel Ha'penny; Viola Lark, one of the point-of-view characters, is one of the sisters, another is married to Himmler, and a third is a Communist spy.
The fictional "Combe sisters" in the BBC 2 series Bellamy's People, first broadcast in 2010, bear a striking resemblance to the Mitford sisters. Bellamy meets two of the surviving Combe sisters, said to have been notorious in the 1930s and '40s for their extreme political views, now living together in a strained relationship in the dramatically different political realities of 2010. One an avid fascist and the other a committed Communist, the sisters have hit upon the solution of dividing their stately home down the middle, each converting her side into an homage to her ideology.
In his French language trilogy of novels – Le Vent du soir (1985), Tous les hommes en sont fous (1985), and Le Bonheur à San Miniato (1987) – Jean d'Ormesson recounts a much-imagined version of the exploits of four of the Mitford sisters, through the characters Pandora, Vanessa, Atalanta, and Jessica.
Jessica Fellowes has written six mystery novels, The Mitford Murders (2017), Bright Young Dead (2018), The Mitford Scandal (2020),The Mitford Trial (2021), The Mitford Vanishing (2022), and The Mitford Secret (2023), which feature the three oldest sisters, Nancy, Pamela, and Diana as major characters, and the rest of the family in supporting roles.[12]
Diana Mitford is depicted in Season 6 of the BBC/Netflix TV series Peaky Blinders (2022), played by British actress Amber Anderson. The show is set in the 1930s and depicts Diana, and husband Oswald Mosley, getting involved with fictional protagonist Tommy Shelby to advance their political goals.[13]
In the Discworld novel The Fifth Elephant by Terry Pratchett, werewolf Watchwoman Angua von Überwald refers to two relatives of hers as Nancy and Unity. Angua's brother Wolfgang is a werewolf supremacist whose personal insignia reflect those of Nazism.
In the fourth series of BBC comedy television series The Thick Of It, British Government minister Peter Mannion describes his special adviser Emma Messinger as having "turned into the wrong Mitford sister"[14] during a presentation where she remarks on the physical attractiveness of a likely candidate for Leader of the Opposition.
^Charlotte Mosley, editor, The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters, London: Fourth Estate, 2007, p. 264. According to her sister Jessica, Pamela Mitford had become "a you-know-what-bian" [lesbian].
Deborah Mitford, Duchess of Devonshire (2010). Wait for Me!: Memoirs. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN978-0-374-20768-7.
Further reading
Burke, John (1835). A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Commoners of Great Britain and Ireland, Enjoying Territorial Possessions Or High Official Rank. Great Britain: Nabu Press. ISBN978-1-171-81928-8.
Guinness, Jonathan (1984). The House of Mitford. London: Hutchinson. ISBN978-0-753-81803-9.
