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Diana Mosley

Name: Diana Mosley
Author: Jan Dalley
ISBN: 9780394587363

by Jan Dalley

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Overview

Much has been written about and by the Mitford sisters, who variously dazzled and shocked their contemporaries in England and abroad: Nancy, as a celebrated novelist (The Pursuit of Love); Deborah, as Duchess of Devonshire; Unity, famously infatuated with Hitler; Jessica, as a young Communist, and then as the queen of muckrakers (The American Way of Death). But until now there has been no biography of one of the most extraordinary of them, the beautiful and ambitious Diana.

Married at eighteen into the enormously wealthy Guinness family, Diana had it all -- brains, beauty, social position and money. She bore two sons and created a sparkling society circle that included such artists and intellectuals of the interwar years as Cecil Beaton, Lytton Strachey and Evelyn Waugh (who dedicated Vile Bodies to her). But after only three years she was swept up in the love affair that would change her life: with Sir Oswald Mosley, MP, womanizer and charismatic founder of the British Union of Fascists.

Jan Dalley's careful and dedicated research -- which included many interviews and conversations with the subject herself, now nearly ninety and living in France -- enables her to tell Diana Mosley's story in fascinating, and sometimes grim, detail. Growing enthusiasm for the Nazis spurred frequent visits to Germany and meetings with Hitler and other leaders (the Mosleys were actually married in Goebbels's house in 1936); there were struggles to raise money for Mosley's organization and, finally, after war was declared, years of internment in Holloway prison. Yet at the same time there were friendships with people like Winston Churchill (whose affectionate nickname for her was "Dinamite") and, after the war, a comfortable, if controversial, return to respectability.

Hailed on publication in Britain last year as "a triumph: reflective, considered, intelligent," Diana Mosley brings an unforgettable figure to life, and at the same time throws a bright light onto an exceptionally dark episode of British social history.

About the Author, Jan Dalley

Jan Dalley is the literary editor of the Financial Times. She has translated several books from the French and worked as a book editor. She lives in London with her three children and her husband, the poet and biographer Andrew Motion.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Diana Mosley (b. 1910) was part of England's Mitford family--whose members included Nancy, the novelist, and Jessica, the leftist and author of the muckraking The American Way of Death. Dalley, literary editor of London's Financial Times, ably describes Diana's unconventional upper-class childhood (satirized in 1945 by Nancy in The Pursuit of Love), her development into a beautiful debutante and her life after her marriage to the wealthy Bryan Guinness at age 18. But the bulk of the book--and its most controversial portion--deals with the years 1933-1945, when Diana, then mother of two, left her marriage to live as the mistress of Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists. Married and a notorious womanizer, Mosley had hopscotched from one political party to another until he settled on fascism. (Eventually, she divorced Guinness, and when Mosley's wife died, he and Diana were married at ground zero of fascist Europe: in Goebbels's home.) Notorious in England for their pro-German stance, the Oswalds spent the war years in prison; after WWII, they went back to their life of privilege and right-wing politics. Although extremely well-written, this book has some analytical failings--in part because, although Diana permitted Dalley to interview her, she denied the author access to her (and her husband's) letters and diaries. More troubling is the author's personally--if not politically--sympathetic attitude toward Diana, which seems to make Dalley unwilling to probe deeply into Diana's motivations. Dalley's only explanation for her subject's fascist activities is that she was deeply in love with Oswald. Photos not seen by PW. (May) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

Library Journal

This is the first biography of Diana Mitford Mosley, one of the famous Mitford sisters and yet perhaps best known as the wife of Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Fascist movement before World War II. Diana caused a scandal when she left her first husband for the married Oswald and set herself up as his mistress. This scandal was compounded when she and her sister Unity befriended Adolf Hitler, which along with Oswald's Fascist dealings led to the couple's imprisonment--whether rightly or wrongly--during the war. Neither Diana nor Oswald comes across as particularly likable people, but this is still a fascinating story. Dalley, literary editor of the Financial Times, states in the note on sources that she did not have access to Diana Mosley's unpublished letters or diaries but has interviewed her over several years. It is distressing to note that Dalley does not provide footnotes or exact sources for her work, including many quotes. Recommended for public and academic libraries where there is likely to be interest, though the definitive biography of Diana Mosley has yet to be written.--Julie Still, Multimedia Instruction Lib., Rutgers Univ., Camden, NJ Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\

David Cannadine

Jan Dalley's fascinating and undefeated biography cuts through much of the Mitford mythology and takes us nearer to the truth of things... This book is tolerant, fair-minded and generous.
— The Observer

Diana Souhami

A triumph: reflective, considered, intelligent... with polite determination, she prizes at the tentacles of anti-Semitism of the English aristocracy between the wars.
— The Independent

Kirkus Reviews

Financial Times literary editor Dalley presents this detailed portrait of the charming and elusive Lady Diana Mosley—highborn society beauty, writer, and fascist. Much has been written about Diana's sisters Unity (infatuated with Hitler), Nancy (the celebrated novelist), and Deborah (the Duchess of Devonshire). But this is the first biography of Diana, the wife of the mercurial and notorious Sir Oswald Mosley (leader of the British Union of Fascists). Still alive and quite unrepentant in her late 80s, Diana in her youth was rather more than a free spirit. Her leaving the wealthy Bryan Guinness to become Mosley's mistress had scandalized London society, true enough. But her late-night chats with Hitler, her frequent appearances at Goebbels's villa, and her schemes to set up a specially built radio station in Germany to propagandize southeast England during the late 1930s attracted the interest of British Intelligence. When the war broke out, she was imprisoned until 1943 and remained under house arrest for the remainder of the conflict. She and her husband flirted with anti-Semitic and right-wing organizations after the war, but reputation, tax exile, and the burdens of aristocratic life limited their political involvements: Oswald would climb back on the horse and run a couple of times for a seat in Parliament, while Diana would edit such terms as "fuzzie wuzzies" or "hottentots" out of his political writings on Africa (which Oswald envisioned as the future "estate" of an united European nation). Dalley argues that Diana's life is an example of the search for a coherence during turbulent times, but she rarely offers any commentonDiana's moral imagination beyond remarks about standing by her man or adhering to the things that mattered most to her. And Dalley's research is compromised (to put it mildly) by Mosley's refusal to grant her access to her unpublished papers and diaries until after her death. A guarded, and frequently routine, presentation of a life that might receive a more searching treatment after it ends.