4 NM to DM, 18 June 1935, in Mosley, Charlotte, Love from Nancy (Hodder & Stoughton, 1993), p. 100.
5 NM to UM, 21 June 1935, in ibid., p. 101.
6 NM to DM, 7 November 1934, in ibid., p. 94.
7 Bernard Shaw, Fabian Lecture: ‘In Praise of Guy Fawkes’, 1933.
8 Skidelsky, Robert, Oswald Mosley (Macmillan, 1975), p. 331.
9 Speech at Ealing, 11 November 1934.
10 OSU/1709, NM to JM, 26 May 1937: Nancy decided not to post this letter, she explained, ‘because of my weak mind & not wanting to be tortured when the G[erman]s have conquered us’.
11 Lees-Milne, James, Prophesying Peace (John Murray, 1997), p. 444.
12 Mosley, Nicholas, Beyond the Pale (Secker & Warburg, 1983), p. 390.
13 Tavener vs Mosley, 1937.
14 DM to the author, November 2000.
15 Dalley, Jan, Diana Mosley (Faber and Faber, 2000), p. 196.
16 The villa was at Posillipo, and belonged to Lord Rennell, Peter Rodd’s father.
17 Sir Oswald Mosley to DM, in Beyond the Pale, p. 366.
18 DM to the author, January 2001.
19 Beyond the Pale, p. 364.
20 Ibid., p. 366
21 Ibid.
22 Mosley, Diana, Loved Ones: Sir Oswald Mosley (Sidgwick & Jackson, 1983), p. 167.
23 Mitford, Jessica, Hons and Rebels (Victor Gollancz, 1960), p. 87.
24 CHP, 1935/36, JM to NM, undated.
25 OSU/1566, JM to DD, 11 June 1990.
26 Hons and Rebels, pp. 87–8.
27 Tea at Chartwell, c. 1928. The picture depicts a scene in the dining room, around which are gathered Thérèse Sickert, Diana Mitford, Edward Marsh, Winston S. Churchill, Professor Lindemann, Randolph Churchill, Diana Churchill, Clementine Churchill and Richard Sickert. It can be viewed at Chartwell, in the studio.
28 Unity Mitford, p. 164.
29 Mosley, Diana, A Life of Contrasts (Hamish Hamilton, 1977), p. 142.
30 Julius Schaub, Hitler’s adjutant and personal assistant.
31 She made visits in January, April, September, and in October for her wedding.
32 Loved Ones, p. 172
33 Diana Mosley , p. 213.
34 A Life of Contrasts, p. 142.
35 FO371/184721.
36 A Life of Contrasts, p. 143.
37 The House of Mitford, p. 384.
38 Beyond the Pale, p. 390.
39 Loved Ones, p. 168.
40 For most of the details on Derek Jackson I am indebted to Loved Ones and the Dictionary of National Biography, 1981–5, p. 207.
41 Railway station roughly halfway between Oxford and Cambridge.
42 He won a first-class degree in the natural sciences tripos, part I, in 1926, and a second, in part II, a year later. Leading from this, his work enabled more accurate measurement of hyperfine structures and isotope shifts.
43 The result of Jackson’s work, on the hyperfine structure of caesium, was published by the Royal Society in Proceedings, 1928.
44 OSU/1709, JM to NM, 13 October 1971.
45 Prophesying Peace, p. 444.
46 Loved Ones, p. 78.
Chapter 10: Elopement, 1937
1 OSU/1031, ER to JM, 27 June 1940.
2 Unless otherwise cited, I have used Jessica Mitford’s Hons and Rebels (Victor Gollancz, 1960), chapter 14, for information on her elopement.
3 OSU/155.
4 Toynbee, Philip, Friends Apart (MacGibbon and Kee, 1954), p. 92.
5 CHP, JM papers, 1 February 1937.
6 Ibid., 9 February 1937.
7 Hons and Rebels, pp. 116–17.
8 CHP, February 1937, and OSU, Esmond Romilly letters.
9 OSU/1697, SR to JM, 23 February 1937.
10 CHP and OSU, NR to SR, 23 February 1937.
11 Duchess of Devonshire, My Early Childhood (privately published, 1995), p. 15
12 News Chronicle, 13 February 1937.
13 CHP and OSU, JM to SR, 5 March 1937
14 OSU/1674, UM to JM, 3 April 1937.
15 CHP, cable in JM papers, 1 March 1937.
16 Daily Express, 1 March 1937.
17 OSU/1697, SR to JM, 3 March 1937.
18 OSU/1674, UM to JM, 3 April 1937.
19 Ibid., Joan Farrer Rodzianko to JM, 4 April 1937.
20 Ibid., Ann Farrer Horne to JM, c. 4 April 1937, and 23 April 1937.
21 DD, interview with the author, Chatsworth, May 2000; also Lees-Milne, James, Ancient as the Hills (John Murray, 1997), pp. 173–4.
22 OSU, JM to DD, 26 October 1976: ‘When you said that my running away . . . was the worst thing in your life I was v. astonished . . . As I remember us in those days we weren’t all that adoring . . . I was probably v. jealous of you for being much prettier, and it was far more Boud and me [who were close] . . . Then you also admitted in 1974 when we went over all this that if I had told you about running away you’d have told Muv and Farve, so do admit my instinct . . . was right.’
23 Arthur Pack is a previous subject of the author. See Cast No Shadow (Pantheon Books, 1992).
24 OSU/1709, Nancy Mitford file, JM to NM, undated, c. 29 May 1937.
25 Ibid. Also NM to JM, 14 March 1937.
26 Ingram, Kevin, Rebel (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1985), p. 151.
27 Now 45 pence, but probably worth the equivalent of £15 in today’s terms.
28 OSU, UM to JM, 11 April 1937.
29 Romilly, Esmond, Boadilla (Hamish Hamilton, 1937), p. 196.
30 Rebel, p. 158.
31 OSU/1674, UM to DM, 16 May 1937.
32 OSU/1709, JM to NM, c. early June 1937.
33 OSU/1559, DD to JM, 7 July 1937.
Chapter 11: Family at Odds, 1937–8
1 OSU/1559, DM to JM, 21 May 1937.
2 Gilbert, Martin, Prophet of Truth (Heinemann, 1976), p. 911.
3 OSU/1700, SR to JM, 12 June 1937.
4 OSU/1700, SR to JM, 27 March 1960.
5 OSU/1559, combined: DD to JM, 13 June 1937 and 20 June 1937.
6 Guinness, Jonathan and Catherine, The House of Mitford (Hutc hinson, 1984), p. 410.
7 CHP, SR to JM, 17 June 1937.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid., JM to NM, c. early June 1937.
10 OSU/1697, SR to JM, 12 July 1937.
11 OSU/1559, DD to JM, 20 June 1937.
12 Ibid., DD to JM, 30 June 1937
13 OSU/1697, SR to JM, 3 July 1937.
14 OSU/1674, UM to JM, 10 August 1937.
15 The House of Mitford, p. 415.
16 Ibid., p. 386.
17 Speer, Albert, Inside the Third Reich (Sphere Books, 1960), p. 77.
18 FO371/211(97), 27 September 1937.
19 DM, interview with the author, 15 January 2000.
20 Riefenstahl, Leni, The Sieve of Time (Quartet Books, 1992), pp. 228–9.
21 Hanfstaengl, Ernst, Hitler, The Missing Years (Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1957), p. 224.
22 Ibid., p. 285.
23 The House of Mitford, p. 387.
24 DM to the author, January 2001. ‘Putzi had in fact become rather disloyal. He never stopped telling foreign press chiefs how terrible things were “at the top”. E.g. how much Goering and Goebbels disliked each other, and how much both disliked Streicher. He [Putzi] was an inveterate gossip and just the sort of man one doesn’t want set loose on hostile foreign journalists. Putzi should have been dropped years before but Hitler kept him on for old times’ sake . . . he was a bit of a joke.’
25 Hitler, the Missing Years, p. 286.
26 Ibid., p. 289.
27 Mosley, Diana, A Life of Contrasts (Hamish Hamilton, 1977), pp. 140ff.
28 Mosley, Nicholas, Beyond the Pale (Secker & Warburg, 1983), p. 400.
29 Ibid., p. 399.
30 DM to the author, February 2001.
31 The Acton drawings are now owned by Desmond Guinness and kept at Leixslip Castle in Ireland.
32 Toynbee, Philip, Friends Apart (MacGibbon & Kee, 1954), p. 106.
33 Ibid., p. 107.
34 In his diary he says she asked this of a car-park attendant. See Mitford, Jessica, Faces of Philip (Heinemann, 1984), p. 32
35 Ibid., p. 112.
36 Ingram, Kevin, Rebel (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1985), p. 168.
37 OSU, MS by Bryan Guinness, ‘Dichtung und Warheit among the Mitfords’, c. 1959.
38 OSU/1678, JM to NM, 30 November 1968.
39 Later Dame Christian Howard.
40 OSU/1738, JM to Emma Tennant (and others), 3 September 1993.
41 PRO, birth certificate.
42 CHP, JM to DD, 31 May 1937.
43 Mitford, Jessica, Hons and Rebels (Victor Gollancz, 1960), p. 148.
44 DM, interview with the author, Paris, 2000.
45 Hons and Rebels, p. 149.
46 Friends Apart, pp. 115–16
47 DD, interview with the author, Chatsworth, 4 February 2000.
48 Widow of the late Clement Mitford (David’s elder brother).
49 OSU/1559, DD to JM, 7 July 1937.
Chapter 12: Slide towards Conflict, 1938
1 Speech by Hitler at Nuremberg, 12 September 1938.
2 A study of statistics available in the Public Record Office shows that prior to 1938 the number of political and criminal prisoners in German concentration camps was approximately 25,000. This was similar to the number of convicted prisoners in modern Germany in 1977. The number confined in 1938 was a marked decrease from that of 1933–4. But even the figure of 25,000 was minute in comparison to the millions confined in Soviet slave-labour camps under Stalin, according to a letter in the New Statesman (22 April 1977). This only came to public knowledge two decades later.
3 See Bibliography.
4 Mitford, Jessica, Hons and Rebels (Victor Gollancz, 1960), pp. 145–6.
5 Interview notes, Paris, 2000.
6 DM to the author, 16 January 2001
7 Newspaper articles of the day named him as Edward Warburton.
8 Private letter to the author; Mr Allen is an old friend of the author’s.
9 Evening Standard, 12 April 1937.
10 The Times, 2 June 1937, p. 14; Daily Mirror, 2 June 1937, pp. 1–2.
11 Guinness, Jonathan and Catherine, The House of Mitford (Hutchinson, 1984), p. 412.
12 Quoted in full in David Pryce-Jones, Unity Mitford (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1976), p. 187. FO/371/21581.
13 DM to the author, January 2001.
14 The House of Mitford, p. 421.
15 Ibid., p. 417.
16 Ibid., p. 416.
17 Unity Mitford, p. 196.
18 The House of Mitford, p. 417.
19 Cowles, Virginia, Looking for Trouble (Hamish Hamilton, 1941), p. 154.
20 Ibid.
21 Butler, Lucy (ed.), Letters Home (John Murray, 1991), p. 291.
22 Unity did spend Christmas in England. On 15 December a gossip column reported her sitting with her mother, nibbling at a plate of sausages on her lap (Sydney had clearly given up insisting that Unity stuck to Mosaic dietary law), at an Anglo-German Fellowship Christmas party in Bloomsbury.
23 The House of Mitford, p. 371.
24 Typescript at OSU; partially published in Forum (undated).
25 Attallah, Naim, More of a Certain Age (Quartet Books, 1993), pp. 50–1.
26 The House of Mitford, p. 385.
27 Mosley, Diana, A Life of Contrasts (Hamish Hamilton, 1977), p. 146.
28 The House of Mitford, p. 383.
29 Mosley, Nicholas, Beyond the Pale (Secker & Warburg, 1983), p. 410.
30 Ravensdale, Irene, In Many Rhythms (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1953), p. 146.
31 Ibid.
32 Hastings, Selina, Nancy Mitford (Hamish Hamilton, 1985), p. 115.
33 Nancy also told friends that the ‘wicked nanny’ had suffered from syphilis and that it may have been passed to her, causing her inability to carry a child. This seems extremely unlikely.
34 OSU, Dr William K. Wallerstein, 5 December 1980.
35 Hons and Rebels, p. 152.
36 Toynbee, Philip, Friends Apart (MacGibbon & Kee, 1954), p. 122.
37 OSU/1711, Seldon Rodman to JM (undated).
38 Friends Apart, p. 154. It seems likely that it was at this point, when things looked very black for the couple, that Decca had her abortion.
39 Ibid., p. 152.
Chapter 13: No Laughing Matter, 1939
1 NY Daily Mirror, ‘Only Human’, 21 April 1937.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid., 20 April 1937.
4 Mitford, Jessica, Hons and Rebels (Victor Gollancz, 1960), pp. 209 and 219–20.
5 Daily Mirror, 18 March 1937, p. 17.
6 Guinness, Jonathan and Catherine, The House of Mitford (Hutchinson, 1984), p. 423.
7 Ibid.
8 Pryce-Jones, David, Unity Mitford (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1976), p. 218.
9 The House of Mitford, p. 424. Refers to Adolf Wagner, Gauleiter of Munich. Schwabing is a student and artist district in Munich.
10 Unity Mitford, p. 149. Interview with Lady Gainer, widow of the British consul to Munich in 1936. Of the Jews taken to the island on the Danube, Unity told her, ‘That’s the way to treat them. I wish we could do that in England to our Jews.’
11 DM, interview with the author, Paris, January 2000.
12 The Times, 29 May 1940, p. 9.
13 Mosley, Diana, A Life of Contrasts (Hamish Hamilton, 1977), p. 160.
14 Trevor-Roper, Hugh (ed.), Hitler's Table Talk (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1953), p. 631. This conversation took place on the evening of 16 August 1942.
15 DM to the author, 11 November 2000.
16 DM to the author regarding the Hitler photograph, 6 February 2001: ‘I still have the receipt (dated June 1940) but I never asked them about it after the war because I assumed the Home Office had probably stolen it. All our bank accounts were examined, and our safe at home forced open. Many things disappeared and our solicitor got apologies, but no more, from the Home Office people . . . One thing they stole was our marriage certificate . . . I had great trouble getting a copy from the ruins of Berlin.’
17 The House of Mitford. p. 426.
18 Ibid., p. 427.
19 CHP, JM to SR, 23 August 1939.
20 DM to the author, January 2001.
21 OSU/1651, PM to JM, 30 September 1937.
22 NM to SR, 25 May 1939, in Mosley, Charlotte, Love from Nancy (Hodder & Stoughton, 1993), p. 113.
23 Ibid.
24 Ibid.
25 OSU/1651, PM to JM, 19 February 1978.
26 Love from Nancy, p. 120.
27 Unity Mitford, p. 230.
28 The House of Mitford, p. 428.
29 Unity Mitford, p. 235.
30 Radio Times, 11 April 1981, letter from Mr H.W. Koch of York, quoted in The House of Mitford, p. 432.
31 It was the younger of the two Koch brothers who wrote the letter to the Radio Times.
32 The House of Mitford, p. 434.
33 Unity Mitford, p. 236.
34 And, of course, Eva Braun would eventually die with Hitler in a suicide pact.
35 Unity Mitford, p. 231.
36 NM to Violet Hammersley, 15 September 1939, in Love from Nancy, p. 116.
37 OSU/1697, SR to JM, 29 October 1939.
38 NM to Violet Hammersley, 30 October 1939 in Love from Nancy, p. 123.
39 Ibid. Also OSU/1651, PM to JM, 30 September 1939.
40 Mitford, Jessica, Hons and Rebels (Victor Gollancz, 1960), pp. 196–202.
41 OSU/1679, Blor to JM, 10 December 1939.
The Sisters_The Saga of the Mitford Family Page 57