Mitford family

The Mitford family is an aristocratic English family whose principal line had its seats at Mitford, Northumberland. Several heads of the family served as High Sheriff of Northumberland. A junior line, with seats at Newton Park, Northumberland, and Exbury House, Hampshire, descends via the historian William Mitford (1744–1827) and were twice elevated to the British peerage, in 1802 and 1902, under the title Baron Redesdale.^[1]

The family became particularly known in the 1930s and later for the six Mitford sisters, great-great-great-granddaughters of William Mitford, and the daughters of David Freeman-Mitford, 2nd Baron Redesdale, and his wife Sydney Bowles.^[a] They were celebrated and at times scandalous figures, who were described by The Times journalist Ben Macintyre as "Diana the Fascist, Jessica the Communist, Unity the Hitler-lover; Nancy the Novelist; Deborah the Duchess and Pamela the unobtrusive poultry connoisseur".^[2]

Background[edit]

The family traces its origins in Northumberland back to the time of the Norman Conquest. In the Middle Ages they had been Border Reivers based in Redesdale. The main line had its family seat first at Mitford Castle, then Mitford Old Manor House, prior to building Mitford Hall in 1828; all three are near Mitford, Northumberland.

(28 November 1904 – 30 June 1973) married Peter Rodd, whom she subsequently divorced, and had a longstanding relationship with French politician and statesman Gaston Palewski. She lived in France for much of her adult life. She wrote many novels, including the semi-autobiographical The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate. She was also a biographer of historical figures, including the Sun King.

Nancy Mitford

(25 November 1907 – 12 April 1994) was called "Woman" by her siblings.^[3] John Betjeman, who for a time was in love with her, referred to her as the "Rural Mitford". She married and later divorced millionaire physicist Derek Jackson, and spent much of the 1960s living with Giuditta Tommasi (died 1993), an Italian horsewoman.^[4]

Pamela "Pam" Mitford

(2 January 1909 – 30 March 1945), the only son, was educated at Eton, where he had an affair with James Lees-Milne.^[5] He later had a lengthy affair with Austrian Jewish dancer Tilly Losch during her marriage to Edward James. According to Jessica's letters, Thomas supported British fascism and was posted to the Burma campaign after he had refused to fight in Europe.^[6] He died in action.

Thomas David "Tom" Mitford

(17 June 1910 – 11 August 2003) married aristocrat and writer Bryan Guinness, 2nd Baron Moyne in 1929. She left him in 1933 for British fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley, Bt., with whom she had two sons, Alexander and Max Mosley. The couple were interned in Holloway Prison from May 1940 until November 1943.

Diana Mitford

(8 August 1914 – 28 May 1948) was known as "Bobo" or "Boud" to her siblings. Her adulation of, and friendship with, Adolf Hitler was widely publicised. She shot herself in the head just hours after Britain declared war on Germany.^[6] Her suicide attempt failed but left her with brain damage for the rest of her life. In 1944 her family sent her to the Scottish islet of Inch Kenneth, where she lived out the war.^[7] She died of pneumococcal meningitis at West Highland Cottage Hospital, Oban.

Unity Valkyrie Mitford

(11 September 1917 – 22 July 1996), unlike the rest of her family, was a communist. She eloped with Esmond Romilly to Spain to participate in the Civil War; they subsequently moved to the United States, and Esmond died in action in the Second World War. She remained in the U.S. most of her adult life, where she married Robert Treuhaft and was a member of the American Communist Party until 1958. She wrote several volumes of memoirs and several volumes of polemical investigation, including the best-selling The American Way of Death (1963) about the funeral industry. She was the grandmother of James Forman Jr. and Chaka Forman, sons of the African-American civil rights leader James Forman by her daughter Constancia Romilly.

Jessica Lucy "Decca" Mitford

(31 March 1920 – 24 September 2014) was nicknamed "Nine" by her sister Nancy (Debo's supposed mental age.)^[8] She married Andrew Cavendish, who later became the Duke of Devonshire, and with him turned his ancestral home Chatsworth House into one of Britain's most successful stately homes. She wrote several books.

Deborah Vivien "Debo" Mitford

Nancy Mitford's 1949 novel, , which was based on the family, was serialised by Thames Television in 1980 and by the BBC in 2001. Her novel The Pursuit of Love was serialised by the BBC in 2021.

Love in a Cold Climate

The daughters were the subject of a 1981 musical, , by Caryl Brahms and Ned Sherrin, and of a song, "The Mitford Sisters", by Luke Haines.

The Mitford Girls

A fictional family based on the Mitford sisters features prominently in 's 2007 novel Ha'penny; Viola Lark, one of the point-of-view characters, is one of the sisters, another is married to Himmler, and a third is a Communist spy.

Jo Walton

The fictional "Combe sisters" in the series Bellamy's People, first broadcast in 2010, bear a striking resemblance to the Mitford sisters. Bellamy meets two of the surviving Combe sisters, said to have been notorious in the 1930s and '40s for their extreme political views, now living together in a strained relationship in the dramatically different political realities of 2010. One an avid fascist and the other a committed Communist, the sisters have hit upon the solution of dividing their stately home down the middle, each converting her side into a homage to her ideology.

BBC 2

Samantha Spiro, and Sophie Ellis-Bextor played a version of the Mitford Sisters in a song-based sketch for Season 2 of the Sky Arts comedy series Psychobitches, in the winter of 2014.

Sharon Horgan

In his – Le Vent du soir (1985), Tous les hommes en sont fous (1985), and Le Bonheur à San Miniato (1987) – Jean d'Ormesson recounts a much-imagined version of the exploits of four of the Mitford sisters, through the characters Pandora, Vanessa, Atalanta, and Jessica.

French language trilogy of novels

A portion of Jessica Mitford's writing is used as a spoken-word introduction to the song "Last Act of Defiance", about the , on thrash metal band Exodus's 1989 album Fabulous Disaster.

New Mexico State Penitentiary riot

has written six mystery novels, The Mitford Murders (2017), Bright Young Dead (2018), The Mitford Scandal (2020),The Mitford Trial (2021), The Mitford Vanishing (2022), and The Mitford Secret (2023), which feature the three oldest sisters, Nancy, Pamela, and Diana as major characters, and the rest of the family in supporting roles.^[13]

Jessica Fellowes

Diana Mitford is depicted in Season 6 of the BBC/Netflix TV series (2022), played by British actress Amber Anderson. The show is set in the 1930s and depicts Diana, and husband Oswald Mosley, getting involved with fictional protagonist Tommy Shelby to advance their political goals.^[14]

Peaky Blinders

In the novel The Fifth Elephant by Terry Pratchett, werewolf Watchwoman Angua von Überwald refers to two relatives of hers as Nancy and Unity. Angua's brother Wolfgang is a werewolf supremacist whose personal insignia reflect those of Nazism.

Discworld

In the fourth series of comedy television series The Thick Of It, British Government minister Peter Mannion describes his special adviser Emma Messinger as having "turned into the wrong Mitford sister"^[15] during a presentation where she remarks on the physical attractiveness of a likely candidate for Leader of the Opposition.

BBC

Nancy Mitford (1904–1973)

Pamela Mitford (1907–1994)

Diana Mitford (1910–2003)

Unity Mitford (1914–1948)

Jessica Mitford (1917–1996)

Deborah Mitford (1920–2014)

The Mitford sisters by William Acton:

Deborah Mitford, Duchess of Devonshire (2010). Wait for Me!: Memoirs. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 978-0-374-20768-7.

ISBN

Informational notes

Citations

Bibliography

Further reading

Nancy Mitford Website

at the Wayback Machine (archived 21 October 2008)

Genealogical pictures of the Mitford family

at archive.today (archived 21 January 2013)

Audio interview with Christopher Hitchens of Jessica Mitford (1988)

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