Product Description

Hated and adored, trusted and feared, respected and scorned – public opinion has never been indifferent to Sir Oswald Mosley. A brilliant politician, Mosley turned his back on conventional party politics to found, in 1932, the British Union of Fascists.Over the intervening years until now, many have worked hard to guard Mosley’s reputation but Blackshirt casts new light on the man. The author reveals the true nature of Mosley's relationship with the Nazis, and challenges the prevailing view of Mosley’s descent into anti-Semitism. With ground-breaking research and extensive use of archive material Dorril uncovers a bizarre set of characters and behind-the-scenes friends and colleagues who supported Mosley – the crooks, swindlers, political and royal figures, secret agents, Nazi spies, lovers and ‘crackpots’. Blackshirt is an important and controversial new biography that overturns many of the accepted ideas about Oswald Mosley and British Fascism.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #24824 in Books
• Published on: 2007-03-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 736 pages

Review
'An exhaustively researched and provocative study' John Crosland, Sunday Times 'A deeply researched, scholarly and important book' Scotland on Sunday

John Crosland, Sunday Times
‘An exhaustively researched and provocative study’

Nigel Farndale, Sunday Telegraph
'The authority of this book rests on thorough research’

Customer Reviews

Blackshirt
Sometime ago I read Nicolas Mosleys biographies on his father and was seeking a more indepth life of 'Tom' Mosley. I found it in Dorrils Blackshirt. A brilliant read and probably one of my favourite biographies. For a real insight of Mosley,his politics and those that surrounded him; this is the book. A cracking read.

Extensive but sullen
I was expecting a lot from this book because of the universally ravishing reviews that accompanied it but after the starting chapters that I found exhaustive and thought provoking, my interest started to wane as I realized that the author was engaged in a systematic and ruthless demolishing of the man Mosley and its ideas. I guess that a balanced biography should first of all try to take a detached stance from the person it tries to describe and not to judge it with the eyes of a XXI century political writer, devoid of even a minimum empathy with the man he purports to describe. I found that the modern aspects of dictatorships and their effort, totally failed as they proved, to review the basis of social and class relationships in the 30es were too quickly dismissed by the author that did not even admit that Jewish influence in the British policy was a major force in the shaping of Anglo German relationships and their tragic downfall. Since more than 60 years elapsed from those events I was led to believe that a more balanced and open approach to facts was desirable and formularic antifascism was at least partly overcome. Unfortunately this was not the case with this biography.