The Mitfords - Letters Between Six Sisters

A book edited by Charlotte Mosley might look suspicious given the heavy past of her name, but I became aware of the existence of the Mitford sister when, as a teenager, I had read a short french biography of them. I remember having been instantly fascinated by their destiny. They were the six daughters of Baron and Baronness Redesdale, born between 1904 and 1920, and all of them lived incredible and sometimes very controversial lives.

The title of the book making its content pretty clear, I will only briefly introduce you to the lives of the six sisters, whose correspondence give a very accurate insight into upper-class English society throughout the 20th century. And the writing keeps going for decades, despite family conflicts and political events.

The six Mitford sisters:

- Nancy Mitford (1904-1973) is the eldest of the Mitford sisters. She wrote several novels, including Love in a Cold Climate and The Pursuit of Love, which were very successful at the time. She also wrote biographies of Louis XIV, Mme de Pompadour and Voltaire. In love with a French politician, she spent most of her life in Paris, where she died in 1973.

- Pamela Mitford (1907-1993) married a millionaire, Derek Jackson, and is known as "the rural Mitford", as she didn't share her sister's extravagances.

- Diana Mitford (1910-2003) first married the heir of the Guinness but left him in 1933 to marry Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists, thus creating a scandal at the time. She shared her fascist views with him, and with her younger sister Unity;

- Unity Mitford (1914-1948) is probably the most controversial figure of the family. Sadly she is famous for her fanaticism towards toward Hitler, whom she met and befriended. She attempted suicide by shoting herself in the head, following the beginning of the war between England and Germany, and never ceased being devoted to Hitler. She never fully recovered of the loss of her beloved one nor from her suicide attempt, and died of a meningitis in 1948

- Jessica Mitford (1917-1996) is a real heroin, whose life seems to be taken from an adventure or spy movie. Aged 19, she fled with Esmond Romilly, her second cousin and husband-to-be to Spain, where Esmond was working as a journalist, to report news about the Spanish Civil war. Back to London for a time, the couple left England for America just before the outbreak of the war. While Esmond went missing in 1941, Jessica raised alone their daughter. She married a lawyer, Robert Treuhaft, with whom she got two sons. She worked as a journalist and never gave up her faith towards communism

- the youngest, Deborah, born in 1920, married in 1941 Lord Andrew Cavendish and became the wealthy Duchess of Devonshire till her husband's death in 2004. She was probably the one daughter who accomplished exactly what her parents wished for her by elevating herself to the highest spheres of English nobility.