Customer Reviews

Diana Mosley

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Diana, Lady Mosley, though perhaps not as well-known in the US as her sisters, writers Jessica Mitford (_The American Way of Death_) and Nancy Mitford (_Love in a Cold Climate_ and _The Pursuit of Love_), is a notorious figure in her own right.

Marriage at eighteen to brewery heir Bryan Guinness thrust Diana into the limelight; she quickly established herself as one of the 'bright young things' who dominated the London social whirl. She knew everyone from Evelyn Waugh (his book _Vile Bodies_ is dedicated to Diana and Bryan) to Lytton Strachey of Bloomsbury fame, and became the very image of a glittering social hostess. I say 'image' because only a few years into her marriage Diana was swept off her feet by Oswald Mosley, a promising politician and successful lady-killer whose motto was 'vote Labour; sleep Tory.' Diana was later to claim that meeting Mosley, her 'kindred spirit,' had made her realize how empty her life was, how intellectually unsatisfying.

Leaving her husband and two young sons and living openly as the married Mosley's mistress, Diana soon became a convert to his political philosophy, which by this time had ripened into fascism. Mosley, the founder of the British Union of Fascists, was an unlikely populist, retaining, like Diana, all the trappings of aristocratic life.

During the years before she finally married Mosley Diana spent much of her time in Germany. Partly to further Mosley's career, Diana established herself in Hitler's inner circle. Her younger sister Unity, a rabid Hitler groupie, was to attempt suicide after the declaration of war between Britain and Germany, but Diana was more hard-headed than Unity, for whom Hitler and fascism were twin passions. Diana's intellectual acceptance of the fascist philosophy seems much more shocking by comparison, signifying a cold-blooded determination to minimize or deny the 'tricky bits,' as she was later to call them.

After the declaration of war, Diana and Mosley, now married and parents of two baby boys, were imprisoned at the direction of Winston Churchill, Prime Minister and Mitford relation. Diana and Mosley saw this as a vindictive and senseless act, but they were locked away for nearly four years nonetheless, emerging into a world in which they had no real place any more.

Most of Jan Dalley's _Diana Mosley_ concerns the tumultuous years I have briefly summarized. Dalley, although considered too uncritical of Diana by a number of reviewers, provides a balanced account of Diana's life and times. In a very real sense, allowing the unrepentant Diana to speak for herself serves to underscore both the moral bankrupcy of fascism and the 'banality of evil,' as Hannah Arendt termed it.

Actually, this book is more a history of a whole family - notably the Mitford sisters - than a biography of an individual in the strict sense. Since the author was dependent on published sources and was denied access to the private correspondence of both Diana and Sir Oswald, it is up to the reader to take a view on the macro issues. Was Diana a fully fledged fascist? Well, up to a point, but she would have been against the Holocaust had she known of it in the 1940s. Or so we are led to believe. So maybe it's best to describe Diana as a drawing-room fascist. She was one of the very, very few people to have known quite well both Hitler and Churchill, yet she seems to have distanced herself from politics for the most part. In an interesting sidelight, we learn that Churchill wrote to the governor of Holloway, where she was imprisoned under the 18b regulations, suggesting she could take more baths than were allowed to other prisoners. This offer she rightly refused. Yet, in this biography, you never feel you know Diana intimately. She is usually publicly aloof, intensely private and obviously forever loyal to Sir Oswald. Her later life, following her husband's death in 1980, is very sketchily described. Dalley's study is an interesting gallop through a fascinating life. The dynamics of family life are the strongest point. But it will be left to future studies to analyse fully Diana's personal impact on the turbulent times she witnessed and, perhaps, helped to mould.

While this book may seem interesting to those unfamiliar with the writings by and about the Mitford sisters, to a rabid Mitford fan it may fall flat. The author did not have access to Lady Mosley's letters (although she did have Lady Mosley's cooperation with the book), and the result is a biography entirely lacking in the Mitford charm and wit. Little new information is brought to light, personality is taken into little account, and at times the book is muddled and repetitious. While the author obviously did extensive research, the book was not a pleasure to read - which is a first, in my opinion, among the many books by and about Mitfords. Perhaps Charlotte Mosley, who did such a masterful job editing Nancy Mitford's and Evelyn Waugh's letters ("Love from Nancy: The Letters of Nancy Mitford," 1993; and "The Letters of Nancy Mitford & Evelyn Waugh," 1996, both Houghton Mifflin) might get her hands on some more letters and publish them? The correspondence of all of the sisters would be a massive tome - but massively entertaining. Unlike this new biography. I'm very sorry, but it's true.

It is difficult for most people living at the beginning of the twenty first century to understand the attraction Adolf Hitler had for intelligent, civilized people. "Diana Mosley" helps us understand by telling the story of an upper class English couple who were seduced by Hitler's charm. It's too easy to dismiss potential fuhrers and duces and their followers as marginal, uninvolved, and uninteresting people. We need to be reminded, as "Diana Mosley" does, that anyone from anywhere can be entranced by evil.

Ms. Dalley does a superb job of detailing Diana Mosley's life. Her book is comparable to Anne de Courcy's biography of Diana but has a number of additional details. Her portrayal of Diana as an intellectual who is also a bon vivant is quite accurate. She also somewhat emulates Diana in her own role as an author who offers a bit of sarcasm. I think that is a very good trait!

Excellent in detail of Diana (Mitford) Mosley and her husband, also her family, and occurrences in Hitler's Germany.

I disagree with the reviews that complain that the subject is not atacked for her political views. It is a obvious that anyone tied who can be directly tied to this view during this period and is established as an anti-semite is morally reprehensible. The author does not and should not even try to attack those views as that is not the purpose of the book. The purpose is to follow the journey of Mosley from aristocratic child to spouse of an anti-Semitic fascist leader and beyond. As to post-war discussions, of course, any normal person would be disgusted by much of Mosley's conduct. Still, that is part of the story.

As is obvious, this is one of those biographies devoted to the life of someone who one might assume to be a secondary or even a minor, if any, influence on history. As the wife of the leader of the consolidated fascist union in the years proceeding world war two, one might view Diana Mosley as someone simply in the shadow of her husband. The author surprised me with an extremely well written insight into the significant role of this woman, not in relationship to others, but as to her conduct and accomplishments, for right or wrong, throughout her life. Instead of explaining her in the context of other people, the author discusses events and other people in the context of Mosley.

As pointed out above, this book goes against the usual approach of biographies of "secondary" personalities on the world stage. I have frequently found such books give very little attention to the person's life before whatever significant event or events they are tied to. Here the author not only explores Mosley's childhood in depth, but also all the member of her immediate family. Far more impressively, the author somehow manages to seamlessly maintain the family backdrop throughout Mosley's life. To me, I greatly appreciate a book that has, for lack of a better term, an even approach throughout. I do not care for books, particularly biographies, that start almost abruptly with a short chapter on childhood, then devotes the huge majority on the primary issues of history involved, and finally again almost abruptly ends with a short chapter about death and/or retirement. The greatest strength of this book in my humble opinion is that common flaw is absent here.

Finally, the author had took an unusual approach to her sources, both primary and secondary. She relied a great deal on books written by Mosley's sisters and other contemporaries. Likewise, she also relied a great deal on information she acquired directly from Mosley. An academic might have some problems with her approach, as she did not bury the manuscript in footnotes, but it is effective. Where relevant, the author simply cites the materials as the basis of the information in the text. This approach is perhaps a result of the author being a journalist and not an historian. However, that certainly should not be held against her, as William Shirer has demonstrated.

Again, I do not hold myself out as an expert of the period. Still, I have read a number of books dealing with the extension of both the fascist and communist movements in a number of democracies including the United States, England, France and South Africa. Based on my previous readings, I had an almost myopic view of fascism in England embodied solely in the person of Oswald Mosley. Besides giving me an excellent insight into the British young aristocratic society in the pre-war years, this book also gave me a new view of the specific workings of the British fascist movement. If you are interested in such things, I would strongly suggest you give this book a read.

Though I had heard of the Mitford sisters, this was my first foray into a biography about one of them (to be followed by more!). They do have a way of sparking curiosity with their unconventionality and downright bizarreness!

I echo some of the other readers' concerns: Dalley does not address how the Mosleys' despicable views were reacted to later on in life, nor how the unveiling of the true evils of the Third Reich after the war affected them and their thinking (from the question's absence, it appears not to have affected them at all, which is even more ghoulish than ever having those extremist views in the first place). Perhaps if these abhorrent opinions would have been placed in context within a panorama of the public at large at the time, it would have presented a more understandable portrait of why these people believed such nonsensical and evil things.

While Dalley makes it clear that she was under considerable constraint because he subject is still alive (and while Diana Mosley `cooperated,' she would not permit quoting of previously unpublished letters or diaries, hamstringing attempts at insight), the timid minimal pursuit of the farther-reaching implications of their bigotry and racism makes the book appear two-dimensional and sycophantic. Ms. Dalley should have posed the hard (and most interesting) questions, and shown the faces of the Mitford children's virulent views for what they are: hateful-and all the ensuing questions of how? why? etc. Instead, she is charmed by the cosmetic trappings and glittering society. These aspects of Diana are interesting as well, but the underlying theme of how she and the others evolved into people who willingly embraced evil (and apparently never disavowed it or apologized for it) remains effectively untapped here. One feels one has read through Diana's daybook-whom she had lunch with, the litany of residences, where she traveled-but without truly touching the heart of who this woman really is and what she is all about. It gives the sense of reporting rather than biography. Again, perhaps that was the result of the subject's stonewalling, who knows?

Despite these difficulties, I found the book to be well-written and immensely readable (I would have actually preferred more detail, especially toward the end where time is compressed and everyone's endings are tidied up much too summarily) and consider it, if you have an interest in the Mitfords, better read than unread.

In the years preceding the second World War, Diana Mitford left her wealthy young husband, with whom she had two small children, to take up with Sir Oswald Mosley, the maximum leader of the British Fascist party. She found him and his cause far more exciting and engrossing than the regular upper-class art and society crowd she had previously ornamented, which was populated with dreary "parlour pinks". Now she split her time between a love nest in London and Berlin, where she and her sister Unity spent their days sucking up to Hitler and his inner circle. Diana tried to get Hitler to cough up money for Mosley. Mosley himself concentrated more successfully on Musselini, who did indeed secretly provide funds for the care and feeding of British brownshirts.

At some point Mosley's wife (yes, he was married too, and on his second marriage) conveniently died. Mosley was faced with a dilemna. Should he marry Diana? Or his other lover, his dead wife's sister. I guess he procrastinated as long as he could, until finally sweeping Diana off her feet for the ultimate in romantic weddings. A small gathering in Nazi Germany: just the happy couple, the Goebbels and, of course, Adolf Hitler. Then they returned to England to continue the good fight at home.

Not surprisingly, when was broke out, Diana and her knight in shining armor were incarcerated. The Mosleys' regarded this as dreadfully unfair, since he had given lip service to patriotic concerns by announcing that his brownshirts should join up. The Mosleys' regarded their captors as foolish and dim. But it was clear to even the dullest mind that Mosley would be Hitler's man in England if the was started going poorly, and if Mosley had his way compromise with Hitler would be the next step in the war.

After the war the Mosleys' returned to a much quieter lifestyle--raising some of the numerous children they had spawned in their various marriages (those that they were allowed custody of) to become good fascists. They eventually turned their energies to the Neo Nazi movement in England, and Diana used her keen mind to help these thugs, bigots and nuts try to mask their vicious, malignant motives with pseudo-intectual political sophistry.

The book is very informative and interesting, but disturbing. The author points out how inconsistent and appalling some of the political philosophy Diana embraced was, most notably with respect to anti-semitism. But the author does not seem to challenge some of their more dreadful sophistries: such as the popular neo-nazi notion that the Jews would not actually have been GASSED if England hadn't come into the war. (with its corollary that England and those other mean countries wouldn't have picked on poor Germany if those nasty Jews hadn't made such a fuss about being persecuted, beated, robbed and murdered!)

The author at times seems to be writing a standard Society bio, full of cameos of the rich and famous, and boasts of their devotion to Diana. The author also seems quite sympathetic to Diana's distaste for parlour pinks and "pinkos" (I'm quoting the author here), and to the notion that fascism and even collusion with Hitler is more acceptable than any truck with communism or the Labour Party.

Nevertheless, I'd recommend reading it. It is definitely food for thought in a lot of ways.

Of the many new biographies that I have read recently, barring a few of Prince Charles, this is one of the most sycophantic and subjective. The views that Diana and Oswald Mosley spouted were deplorable then as any fascist/racist views now. The terror and horror fascism caused between 1933 and 1945 in Germany alone, Ms Dalley seems to feel was not realised by the Moseleys. They were not apparently aware of the sinister connotations of their beliefs! They were innocents, merely trying to find a better life for the British! While the Moseleys didn't institute such atrocities as Hitler did, Oswald did spread racial hatred, and caused persecution in England, although Jan Dalley seems to feel that this was a mere by-product, caused by a few unreasonable fanatics.

I could go on and on. My other gripe about this book was Ms Dalley's blanket 'condemnation' of the autobiographical writings of Nancy and Jessica Mitford. While exaggeration may have occured it was no more that would occur in any family autobiography. . .who can look at their family objectively????? Indeed, this exaggeration was true of their general characters, and the manner in which they were brought up, and the conventions of their time and class. At least they didn't preach hatred and bigotry.

I digress. The duty of a biographer, IMHO, is to provide an objective and informative view of the subject, so that the reader can make a decision for themselves.

Ms Dalley professes to offer reasons, not excuses, and seems to think that it is reasonable to defend the deplorable views of this possible intelligent, possibly beautiful, possibly wronged woman with the reasoning that D. Mosely didn't know about the full horror of fascism pre 1945, and hers was an innocent form, as I have said. I feel myself being incoherent in my indignation, so I shall cease. My objective view of this book is that I can only suspect that Ms Dalley is herself a 'drawing room fascist'.