Product Description

This title offers a fascinating and controversial life of the 'Mitford girl' who ran away with the British fascist leader Oswald Mosley, and was a close friend of Adolf Hitler. Diana Mosley was one of the most fascinating and controversial figures of recent times. For some, she was a cult; for many, anathema. Born in 1910, Diana was the most beautiful and the cleverest of the six Mitford sisters. She was eighteen when she married Bryan Guinness, of the brewing dynasty, by whom she had two sons. After four years, she left him for the fascist leader, Oswald Mosley, and set herself up as Mosley's mistress - a course of action that horrified her family and scandalised society. In 1933, she took her sister Unity to Germany; soon both had met the new German leader, Adolf Hitler. Diana became so close to him that when she and Mosley married in 1936 the ceremony took place in the Goebbels drawing room and Hitler was guest of honour. She continued to visit Hitler until a month before the outbreak of war; and afterwards, for many, years, refused to believe in the reality of the Holocaust. This gripping book is a portrait of both an extraordinary individual and the strange, terrible world of political extremism in the 1930s.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #142164 in Books
• Published on: 2004-11-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

About the Author
Anne De Courcy is a well-known biographer, journalist, interviewer and reviewer. She lives in London. Her book about the Curzon sisters, The Viceroy's Daughters, was a bestseller in Phoenix paperbacks.

Customer Reviews

A clear picture of a complex person
In this book, Anne de Courcy manages two remarkable feats. The first is that she found something new to say about the much-discussed Mitfords. The second is that she has given us a fresh and unbiased view of a controversial subject. The fact that Diana cooperated with her biographer deserves a mention; that in itself is remarkable.

The problem with Diana Mosley is that she was, as a person, highly intelligent, fascinating and attractive - but her political views were, and are, repellant. Anne de Courcy does not try to explain away Diana's views, sweep them under the carpet, or attempt to justify them. She simply presents the facts, with enough background information to put them in context.

This book is a gripping read - I read it at one sitting - and it is remarkable for the balanced view it presents. The appendices are also valuable additions to the main text. The biographer does not force the reader to accept her conclusions about Diana; there is enough information here for the reader to make his or her own judgement on the complex person that was Diana Mosley.

A Fascinating Book
Anne de Courcy has penned a fascinating account of the life of Diana Mosley. Her early life with her extraordinary sisters, the Mitford girls and her even more eccentric parents - Lord Redesdale's apocalyptic rages are wonderfully described - display the enormous amount of sheer hard work which Anne de Courcy has invested into the work.

Not that Diana Mosley emerges from the book with any great credit; her political views have put paid to that. And her first husband, Bryan Guinness, is portrayed as a consummate drip, poor fellow. But then, this is not a book about necessarily nice people; it is an honest book and the author has quite ruthlessly delved into every nook and cranny to pluck out every bit of information to ensure that the biography of one of England's most extraordinary women, is utterly first-rate.

A very sad story
Diana Mosley had everything going for her - radiant beauty, wealth, family connections, intelligence, charm... but she didn't use these assets to her own advantage. In fact, I think her life became sad and tragic through her ghastly involvement with Hitler and the Nazi movement. This doesn't make her any less a fascinating woman but one feels she could have had such a different life. Anne de Courcy presents all the spell-binding twists and turns of her life - marriage to one of the wealthiest men in Britain, divorce, life with Mosley, the horrible treason of her own sister Nancy, imprisonment, and her bravery in old age - in a riveting biography.