The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family [Paperback]

Mary S. Lovell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 17, 2003

"[A] balanced, well-researched, and beautifully written biography....[an] exceptional achievement."—Bay Area Reporter, Tavo Amador

The Mitford girls were probably the most spectacular sister act of the twentieth century."—Vogue This is the story of a close, loving family splintered by the violent ideologies of Europe between the wars. Jessica was a Communist; Debo became the Duchess of Devonshire; Nancy was one of the best-selling novelists of her day; the ethereally beautiful Diana was the most hated woman in England; and Unity Valkyrie, born in Swastika, Alaska, would become obsessed with Adolf Hitler. 24 b/w photographs

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In her history of England's Mitford sisters, who were major figures in the international political, literary and social scenes for much of the 20th century, Lovell (The Sound of Wings: The Biography of Amelia Earhart; etc.) rises with aplomb to the challenges of a group biography, deftly weaving together the narrative threads of six at times radically disparate lives to create a fascinating account of a fascinating family. Born into the ranks of the minor aristocracy and educated at home by eccentric and perennially cash-strapped parents, Nancy, Pamela, Diana, Unity, Jessica and Deborah Mitford hardly seemed the types whose exploits would generate endless fodder for the sensationalist press. But when Diana left her wealthy young husband to take up with and eventually marry Sir Oswald Mosley, infamous leader of British fascism; when Unity became close friends with Adolf Hitler and a proponent of Nazism; when Jessica, a vocal Communist, eloped with a notorious cousin who was also a nephew of Winston Churchill; when Deborah married the Duke of Devonshire; and when both Nancy (Love in a Cold Climate) and Jessica (The American Way of Death) became acclaimed, bestselling authors, the world responded with avid, insatiable and at times alarmingly intrusive curiosity. But whether adored or reviled by their public, all the Mitford sisters were engaged with (and at times embodiments of) the major social and political issues of their time. Lovell's account of the sisters' upbringing and their often tumultuous adult lives is as lively and engrossing as Nancy's heavily autobiographical fiction; the group biography also does a commendable job of separating the myths that fiction created from the sometimes more mundane realities of the Mitfords' activities and relationships. 16 pages of photos not seen by PW.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Lovell's biography of the Mitford sisters illustrates "the complex loyalties and love, disloyalties and even hate, and above all the laughter that ran through this family's relationships." Lovell (A Rage To Live: A Biography of Richard and Isabel Burton) presents an engrossing narrative that captures the distinct personalities of six headstrong, determined, and witty women who had a surprisingly pervasive impact on 20th-century social, political, and literary history. At the heart of the biography is Unity Mitford, who was obsessed with Adolf Hitler and widely rumored to be his mistress. In the telling of Unity's saga, Lovell's extreme evenhandedness can be exasperating. Unity sent a letter to a German newspaper, for example, exclaiming, "I am a Jew hater," but Lovell withholds comment or condemnation. While Unity provides the most dramatic story, the lives of the other sisters Jessica, a Communist; Debo, Dutchess of Devonshire; Diana, wife of Fascist leader Oswald Mosley; novelist Nancy; and Pamela are also excellently narrated and seamlessly woven together. While this is not the first biography of the Mitford family, and full biographies have been written about three of the sisters, Lovell claims to have drawn upon "personal interviews, family papers and correspondence not previously seen outside the family." If you can overlook the biography's occasional reticence about the horrific political realities of Nazism in the 1930s and 1940s, this is a captivating read.
- Amy Strong, South Portland, ME
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 640 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; Later Printing edition (March 17, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393324141
• ISBN-13: 978-0393324143
• Product Dimensions: 1.2 x 5.5 x 8.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (82 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #19,283 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #20 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Arts & Literature > Artists, Architects & Photographers
  • #81 in Books > History > Europe > England

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

71 of 75 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Mitfords make fascinating reading June 4, 2002

By A. Woodley

Format:Hardcover

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.

44 of 48 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars And you think YOUR siblings are a problem! January 11, 2005

By .

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

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.

113 of 134 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars A Very Flawed Masterpiece September 20, 2003

By michael sutherland

Format:Paperback

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?!