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The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family

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The Mitfords - six sisters, their brother and two parents make for fascinating reading and there have been a few biographies, autobiographies and of course the semi-autobiographical novels of Nancy which have managed to fuel the publics desire to hear more. Lovell's biography of the family is more than just the most recent book. It makes use of all the sisters letters and notes (access hasn't always been allowed in the past - especially to Decca's private papers) and it also helps to shed light on the positives and negatives of all the works which have been published in the Mitford collection.

Lovell , whose work I very much admire, has the art of discussing with judging - either her subjects or their previous biographers. I feel she leaves the judgement to the reader to make, and in this case it is a very good thing. The Mitford family had a very controversial set of characters. Nancy with her 'teases' was perhaps the most outrageous within the family, but publically there was the divorce of Diana in the 1930's followed by her seemingly long affair with Moseley (the leader of the British Fascists) and her later marriage and unapologetic support for him and their cause. Unity Mitford is famous, or should I say infamous, for her long friendship with Hitler. Decca ran away from home with her cousin at the age of about 18 and went to Spain to support the Communists in the Spanish Civil War of 1936. She later married her cousin Esmond and went to live in America where she remained very much cut off from her family - mostly it seems for reasons of her own. The other two sisters, Pamela and Debo led quieter lives and in Debo's case only marginally less interesting. All in all the girls were just fascinating indeed.

Lovell starts her book with a brief summary of what isn't going to be in it. The introduction covers the material which has been done before (try the biography by Jonathon Guiness, Diana's son, if you want to read more on this) and then the material which _will_ be in it. Much of the book is rehashed to some extent - well it has to be doesn't it as there is only so much new material and much of the old stuff is just as interesting. It also needs to be there to shed light on the new material which Lovell includes later. Each chapter is done in date order so all the sisters are followed up in each section, although for obvious reasons some are mentioned more than others - for instance, Unity dominates the early thirties, Decca, the later thirties,

This new material includes the use of Decca's papers and letters, and much of this is made use of in the latter portion of the book. Whereas there seems to be very little about Debo, the Duchess of Devonshire or Pamela the quiet 'rural' Mitford. I suppose with the Duchess still alive there might be problems with using too much material on her or maybe, like Pamela there is not that much controversial which would make it interesting. Nevertheles, what is used is well worth it as it gives insight into the problems the landowning peers had in the 1930's with death taxes and inheritance.

If nothing else this family is deadly funny. Nancy showed that in her novels Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate ( and her other novels of course but those two really are her very best work). The family seem to have an inordinate amount of charm, shart intellegence and wit which was present from their childhood. Despite none of them having more than a cursory formal education, they were taught by a series of governesses with varying levels of commitment (one spent the whole time teaching them to play a card game called Racing Demon) - they all seemed to have taken on very formidable careers and excelled at them.

Lovell is unable to show quite why they all excelled as they did - perhaps it was all hereditary as they had exceptional grandparents - but she certainly does expose a very talented family and a funny one. This book is a wonderfully easy read about a wonderfully funny interetsting family.

To begin, the author has done an outstanding job of research, compilation, and organization. Quite a balancing act with multiple subjects, and the author has superbly achieved her feat. This said, the biography has too many serious flaws for it to be given the rave notices of most reviewers. I'm afraid most readers are too enchanted by the fascinating lives of these highly unusual women and, thus,have not critically approached the book. The author has provided us with a literary tea party with her subjects, but other than the superficial facts of their lives, she has provided us with only an elementary analysis or understanding of who and what they were, and more importantly, how and why they got that way. Perhaps a more thorough grounding in psychology could have benefited the writer in her profession. The unique characters of David and Sydney Mitford are the key to understanding their daughters. Both of them had troubled emotional lives that were fully transfered genetically and environmentally to their offspring. Sydney lost her mother at a very young age and emotionally "shut down" for the rest of her life. A paragon of virtue, totally devoted to her family, she was like a dead-pan, sonombalant iceberg. It must have been maddening to these six girls to have such an outwardly unfeeling, unaffectionate mother. Imagine how it must have felt to know that nothing you did, even threatening suicide by jumping off the manor roof, could ever do more than raise a polite and tranquil eyebrow of your mother and elicit only a supremely detached and blaise reaction. And the father - even as a boy it seems apparent that he had mental problems - just not eccentricity - but blind rages that alienated him from his boyhood family. As a father, David deeply loved his children but completely undermined them by his relentless volcanic fits of rage. His good side was his sharp, sarcastic humor which amused his children, but sadly taught them that it was the only acceptable vehicle for expressing their emotions. Thus, the four famous daughters adopted a sharp-tongued pose to hide their damaged emotions. There's way too much of these things to go into at any depth here. Suffice it to say, the author failed to give her subjects the psychological analysis and understanding that they were screaming for their entire lives. She also failed to give an objective view of the British caste system and way of life that helped create their attitudes, such as the emotional sterile childhoods of he upper classes that necessitates the life-long use of childish nicknames. Nicknames are almost a sub-theme of the book, but the author fails to note their importance in both helping to keep the users securely attached to their meager childhoods with their nannies in the nursery and also to perpetuate the upper class eliteness of having a private club with secret passwords - you know you belong because you use the ridiculous childhood nickname - thus today you could not be more upper class than if you referred to Her Majesty the Queen as "Lillibet". As for the technical, a good editor is screamed for here. The author has no gift for sentence construction or the usage of words. She loves introducing a sentence with a dependant clause that has nothing to do with the subject of the sentence. It is so often confusing and irritating - the reader has to skip back a few sentences to see what she's referring to. An example: "Indulging in these constant volcanic eruptions with loud shouts and dangerously flashing blue eyes, the house was not a pleasant place to be." Now, where's the editor? It's absurd that an author be allowed to drop or confuse her subject noun literally dozens of times in a book. And the sloppy choice of pronouns is also confusing and sometimes disastrous. When five or six women are previously mentioned by name, and then the author proceeds to refer back to one of them with the "she" pronoun, you have to almost disect the paragraph to figure out which she is being referred to. Like I said, a great researcher this author certainly is - a great organizer - but a very untalented writer, and, alas, a very mediocre biographer who lacks the skills of critical analysis and intellectual understanding to give these fascinating subjects the presentation that they truly deserve. But a worthy attempt. Once again, WHERE WAS THE COPY EDITOR?!

The Mitford clan was the epitome of old English gentry and minor aristocracy. The father of the sisters who are the subject of this book, DAVID MITFORD, 2nd Baron Redesdale, was related to Winston Churchill. Their mother, SYDNEY BOWLES MITFORD, came from a distinguished family.

NANCY (1904-1973) was the oldest and became a hugely successful writer of satirical fiction that poked savage fun at her own family and class.

PAMELA (1907-1994) was the most "normal" of the lot. She married and divorced a scientist, and was content to live quietly in the country.

DIANA (1910-2003) was one of the two most controversial sisters. Beautiful and charming, she was the muse of several artists in her teens, and married the heir to the Guinness brewing fortune when she was 18. She left him four years and two babies later and ran off with Sir Oswald Mosley, founder of the British Union of Fascists and the most hated man in England. They remained devoted to each other for the rest of their lives, which made her the most hated woman in England. They were imprisoned for more than three years during the war but never wavered in their commitment to both fascism and each other.

UNITY VALKYRIE (1914-1948), known as "Boud" or "Bobo" to her sisters, was by far the most controversial sister. A striking Valkyrie-esque beauty, Unity, who was conceived during her parents' sojourn in the unfortunately-named town of Swastika, Canada, lived up to her karma by becoming obsessed with Nazism while in her teens. She managed to meet Hitler and become obsessed with her new friend and proudly wore her Hitler-signed swastika badge everywhere. When England and Germany declared war, she tried to commit suicide, but botched the job, shooting herself in the head but not killing herself. Incontinent and childlike, she lived in the care of her mother for another ten years.

JESSICA (1917-1996) "Decca" was probably the best-known of the sisters to American audiences. At the age of 18, already a committed Communist, she ran off with her black-sheep cousin Esmond Romilly, a nephew of Churchill's, to fight in the Spanish Civil War. After the British sent a battleship to fetch her home, the young Romillys went to the US where they tried to make a living as writers and bar-tenders before Esmond enlisted in the Canadian army. He was killed on a mission over the North Sea. Decca found a job with the American Communist party, moved to Oakland, remarried, had another child, and wrote several muck-raking books, of which "The American Way of Death" is the best known. The success of her books enabled her to leave her job with the Party, with which she had become disenchanted as the stories of Stalin's wretched excesses spread, but she remained a radical until she died.

DEBORAH (1920 -2004) Raised alone by her eccentric parents after her sibs had left the home, "Debo" was the mediator between her warring family, in which some one was always on "non-speakers" with someone else. Debo married Andrew Cavendish, second son of the Duke of Devonshire, whose older son and heir to the title, Billy, had married JFK's sister Kathleen. Billy died in the war a few months later and as soon as it was established that Kathleen wasn't pregnant, the title passed to Andrew, making Debo the Duchess. They inherited Cavendish, a huge estate, along with other properties, and she lived quietly there until her death, turning the estate into one of the major tourist attractions in England.

OK, that's the cast. There was also a son, but he gets short shrift, compared to his amazing sisters.

The book itself: The 22 chapters, ranging from 1894 to 2000, trace, in somewhat diminishing degrees of detail, the lives of this eccentric gang. The footnotes alone run to 46 pages. Lovell had free access to family papers and letters. There is also a 4-page bibliography and a 26-page index. There are also three sections of photographs.

The only complaint I have is that there is no real explanation of the forces that drove three of the sisters to commit their lives, in the face of overwhelming opposition and adversity, to the three most oppressive, repressive, and totalitarian forms of dictatorship known. We get a hint about Decca, who seems to have reacted in a knee-jerk way to Diana's involvement with Mosley and his Fascism and, at the behest of Esmond Romilly, comes to see her family as not only the symbol of all that is evil in the world, but also as the literal, actual cause of it. But Decca's eye-opening occurred before she met him, and that's the puzzle. And what drove Unity to immerse herself in Nazism? We never learn. Diana's commitment to Fascism is a little easier to understand. As the deb and then bride of the year, she lived an incredibly wealthy, social, and shallow life, and it wasn't until she met the dashing Mosley that she ever gave a thought to politics. So for her to follow the man she loved into the belly of a hated belief system isn't too surprising. She may have initially embraced fascism for the sake of Mosley and their relationship - understandable, if regrettable - but her steadfast commitment to it, which lasted until her death in 2003, is harder to comprehend.

Whether or not you agree with the beliefs they held, this was a fascinating group of people and the author does an excellent job of bringing them to believable life.

"The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family" tells the (true) story of the Mitford sisters, six beautiful and talented aristocratic young women who came of age in the interwar period.(There was a brother Tom who died during WWII. He does not play a major role in this book nor does it seem in their lives.)

These women lived, for the most part, amazing (though not admirable in all cases) lives: Nancy, the oldest, became a best selling novelist; Pamela, the "least interesting" (to the biographer and her family, though not necessarily the reader), lived a country life after a marriage to a brilliant man who married compulsively (six total); Diana, the society beauty, who left her husband for the fascist Oswald Mosley and who befriended Hitler; Unity, who became obsessed with Hitler and met him 140 times during a short period before WWII; Jessica, the rebel, who eloped at 18, became a communist, moved to the states, and became a best selling author on such topis as the funeral home industry; and Deborah, the youngest, who made the most brilliant marriage, to the future Duke of Devonshire.

This book details the eccentric but loving childhood of these sisters (though the father had murderous rages that seemed to have a lifelong impact on the children) and the diverse set of political causes and men that both brought them together and drove them apart over the years. Any book that affords the reader glimpses of Churchill as an uncle, Hitler as a "friend", Maya Angelou as an honorary "sister", is worth its price. Lovell presents her material in a straightforward manner. The book is thoroughly researched.

However, there are flaws. Lovell could probe further than she does into the psyches of the sisters. Three of them became obsessed with men in ways that bordered on the unhealthy and bizarre (Nancy had a lifelong infatuation for a count that would never marry her, the beautiful Diana dedicated her life to the unfaithful Mosley, and Unity's fixation on Hitler was downright psychotic.) And she lets Diana off the hook a bit too easily for her fascist and pro-Hitler views (Diana never repented.) She seems somewhat bewitched by Diana's external beauty-she met her at the age of 90--and doesn't focuse on the fact that it was external. (As obituary writers did this past summer after her death in August.)
Still it is a great read particularly for those fascinated by the British upper classes between the two wars.

This carefully researched and constructed biography of the six Mitford sisters, Nancy, Pam, Diana, Unity, Jessica and Deborah, and their brother, Tom, is a fascinating look not only of their lives but at the time in which they lived. The reader is drawn into the world of minor British aristocracy and is treated to characters who, although somewhat eccentric at times, seem much like people we know: Parents are well-intentioned if somewhat misled, children are willful and spoiled. Life, however, is frivolous and carefree in an increasingly dangerous and threatening world. It's easy to understand where Nancy got her sense of humor and her ability to write social satire -- it was bred into the bone.

It's also understandable (and not at all uncommon) that the older siblings found some measure of success while the younger ones behaved like the over-indulged, spoiled children they were and never seemed to cease to be.

The reader who remembers (and the student of) the early- and mid-20th century will recognize the famous names that wander through these pages with the infamous family: Aly Khan, Winston Churchill, Katharine Graham, Diana Cooper, Evelyn Waugh and more -- it's a star-studded group of friends, relatives and acquaintances that touch and often seriously influence the lives of the Mitfords.

I loved this book. The story is fascinating and almost surreal as it unfolds through the girls' schooling, debutante years and various adult exploits played against the backdrop of the developing World War and its aftermath. Lovell has done a superb job of presenting the zeigeist of their era and their lives in a readable and entertaining text.

The Mitford family is of course a compelling topic, and as a result Lovell's book grabs the reader from Page One. The author does a commendable good job of sorting out fact from fiction. But why on earth has she let Diana and Oswald Mosley and Unity Mitford off so easily? She accepts the Mosleys' excuses for their horrific beliefs -- "We weren't really anti-Semitic and racist; we were just looking out for England's best interest." And Unity -- well, the poor dear was prone to obsession, and Hitler was just another of her hobbies. Yet Decca and Esmond take a beating for the heinous crime of... eloping? What gives?

The Sisters is a multigenerational story of one of the most dazzlingly complex families ever to grace the pages of Burke's Peerage. The seven children of the second Lord Redesdale were raised in a fairly conventional upper class British manner, with servants and governesses. As five of the six daughters emerged into adulthood, she found quickly found fame (or notoriety). Nancy became a gifted novelist, essayist, and biographer; Diana started as a society hostess and ended as wife of one of the most controversial men in British politics and as an undaunted Hitler apologist; Unity went even further by becoming a Hitler acolyte who shot herself when World War II broke out; Jessica (Decca)also entered politics by becoming a passionate Communist and later a gifted social critic and muckraker; Deborah (Debo) was slightly more traditional in that she became a Duchess and chatelaine of one of England's grandest country houses. Only the second daugher Pam lived a retiring life, and the only son Tom's career was cut short by his death in World War II.

The Sisters is a good introduction to the Mitfords if you aren't familiar with them. Even if you are a long time Mitford aficionado it's a valuable read because it covers all the sisters without favoring or slighting any. This balanced look at the Mitfords will stand out because so much of what has been written about them is biased towards/against one or more of the sisters. Mary Lovell spent a lot of time untangling the real family history, which is important because so much of the sisters' stories has gotten entangled with Nancy's fictional Radletts (from "The Pursuit of Love" and "Love in a Cold Climate") and with Jessica's imaginative memoir "Hons and Rebels".

By the time you finish the book you will be quite fond of all of the sisters and their extended family, and thanks to Ms. Lovell's inclusion of information on their descendants, you will feel like a friend who has known the family for two or three generations.

I knew nothing about the Mitford family before reading this book, so if nothing else, I learned a great deal of history through the events and people discussed in the biography. Several reviews mentioned that the author doesn't discuss why the Mitford sisters were so politically involved with radical groups. I don't know that a biographer always has the answer to "why" her subjects did things, and I don't know that it's the biographer's place to theorize. It is the reader's place to theorize based on the information provided in the book. My theory for the political involvement of the Mitford girls is that they were extremely intelligent young ladies who needed a formal education and their father denied them this opportunity because they were girls. Consequently, as soon as they were old enough to leave home, they did and they seemed to get caught up in whatever political environment they found themselves in. Thus, you find that Unity and Diana support Fascism and Hitler (as did their mother, Sydney after meeting him;) and Decca becomes a Communist due to the influence of Esmond Romilly who she longed to meet for several years. Nancy finds her outlet in writing about and making fun of the English aristocracy, of which she's still very much a part. Pam and Debo are less politically active and Tom seems to take on the views of whomever he is with at the time. The other aspect that can't be overlooked is that the family had the resources to travel all over Europe and to America so that they met important people and became socially involved with politicians, writers, and the celebrities of those times.
I found the family to be very interesting and their role in history to be fascinating. If you like biography and you like history, you'll enjoy this book.

I first read Jessica Mitford's "A Fine Old Conflict" when it was published in the early 1970's. It remained in my bookcase and I recently re-read it and also read "Hons (Daughters) and Rebels" which whetted my appetite for more information on what the sisters came to label as the "Mitford Industry". I then purchased "The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family".

I was not disappointed. I found The "Sisters" really enjoyable and well researched, and the photos excellent. There is much interesting information in the many footnotes, too.

Like Sydney said, "What a Set!"

Mary S. Lovell made a wise decision when she took up her pen and joined the Mitford industry. The Sisters (The Saga of the Mitford Family) is a truly fascinating and endlessly engaging book. And there was no way it could not be with those crazy Mitfords: Nancy, Jessica, Debo, Diana, Pam and, of course, the very tragic Unity Valkyrie, conceived at Swastika Canada and devoted friend of Hitler. The story of these sisters spans the twentienth century and travels all over the political spectrum. The author shows her own conservative bias clearly throughout and was obviousaly charmed by Diana Mosely (nee Mitford), the still living wife of Sir Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Fascists during the interwar years. But her prejudices and political naivete (the author's suggestion that World War II could possibly have been avoided if Diana just brought Hitler and Churchill, a relative of hers, together is quite silly and should have been edited out) are so apparent that one can enjoy the book regardless. The portrayal of the mother of the girls, Sydney, is the most interesting to come along of her. A wonderful, delightful read of six powerfully individual women.