How the scandalous Mitford sisters' political ideologies and antics shaped their legacy

Aficionados of the Mitfords are thrilled and worried in equal measure at the prospect of a six-part TV drama revolving around the headline-grabbing high society girls and the political ideologies which tore them apart. Will Outrageous, based on the highly entertaining antics of Britain’s most scandalous aristocrats, do them justice? How will the 1930s-set drama handle the sparkling wit of family chronicler Nancy, then on the cusp of literary fame; the charming eccentricities of Pamela and Deborah, known as ‘Debo’; the restlessness of Communist Jessica; and the appalling politics of Hitler-loving Diana and Unity?

In today’s world of radical leaders and attention-seeking influencers, the Mitfords are more relevant than ever. Yet history has not been kind to the Mitfords, largely due to Diana’s marriage to Sir Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists, and Unity’s friendship with Adolf Hitler.

Of course, it’s completely legitimate to criticise the Nazi-sympathising sisters. Diana never denounced Hitler and Unity died from an infected bullet wound, nine years after having attempted suicide onthe day the Second World War was declared by shooting herself with a pearl-handled pistol given her by the Fuhrer.

But there is more to their story than bad politics and, as their biographer, I’m fascinated by what made them tick.

“I am normal, my wife is normal, but my daughters are each more foolish than the other,” their father, Lord Redesdale, known as “Farve” and played by James Purefoy in the new drama, said of his daughters who ran roughshod through high society, collecting admirers such as Evelyn Waugh, Noel Coward, and Cecil Beaton.

Madness often skips a generation and Lord Redesdale failed to consider environment and genetics, and how eccentricity galloped through the bloodline. Their paternal grandfather fathered children with a geisha and their maternal grandfather founded The Lady magazine to provide his mistress with a job. Their mother, Sydney, known as “Muv” and played on-screen by Anna Chancellor, had inspired strong affections in the writer Lewis Carroll, who sent her love letters when she was just 11.

On the subject of Diana, Unity and Jessica’s radicalism, their step-great-grandmother, Arethusa Gibson, beat them to it; she was a friend of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte during his exile in London, and a supporter of Giuseppe Mazzini and theunification of Italy – so enamoured with the cause, she wore an Italian tricolour to the opera in Genoa.

Indeed, adhering to society’s norms did not appeal to the Mitfords or their forebears. “Society can be pretty beastly to those who disobey its rules,” Nancy warned her sister, Diana, before she eloped with Mosley. Perhaps this ironic warning was a “Mitford Tease”, as the girls called their high-jinks.

Home in the Cotswolds, was a dull place for the girls; they were awoken each day by their father’s Puccini records and were forbidden to read in bed, eat processed food or take medicine. They loathed the countryside and went for long walks, hoping to bekidnapped by a white slaver.

Far from rich, Muv kept hens and sold eggs to London restaurants, perhaps remembering the days onboard her miser father’s yacht, in which they slaughtered dolphins to survive. As children, they were part of a programme known as The Sunbeams, in which they wrote letters to the impoverished; however, Nancy (Bessie Carter) once addressed one envelope to Tommy Jones, the Slums, London; and Jessica, known to everyone as “Decca” and played in the new drama by Zoe Brough, brought her Sunbeam to work for them as a servant. Equality and Civil Rights would follow later, after Decca’s move to America, where she eventually settled in the working-class area of Oakland.

Only Pamela and Debo (Isobel Jesper Jones and Orla Hill in the new drama) really relished country life, but the former was disturbed by a poltergeist at their childhood home, Asthall Manor, which was said to have stripped a housemaid of her clothes. The haunting forced their father to sell up and move his family and pet gerbils to a cheap hotel in Paris, where Diana (Joanna Vanderham) became enamoured with Paul César Helleu, the painter.

From a young age, Diana learned that her beauty was her power. Their cousin, Sir Winston Churchill, called her “Dinamite” and his wayward son, Randolph, fell in love with her. She enraged her admirers when she married Bryan Guinness at the age of 18, even though her mother disapproved of rich people but realised Guinness couldn’t help it. Guinness provided her with an escape, but she soon fell into the arms of Mosley, who dazzled her with political conversation.

Little is known about the trajectory of Diana’s initial downfall – as a young wife and mother, she was bored in her gilded cage. She was frustrated with Bryan’s kindness, which contrasted with the fate of Nancy and Pamela.

Pamela would marry the millionaire physicist Derek Jackson, who had been in love with the girls’ only brother, Tom, who would be killed at the end of the Second World War, and so married her to stay close to him. Nancy also spent her twenties engaged to Hamish St Clair-Erskin, who was gay, and suffered a rebound marriage to Peter Rodd, an alcoholic whose debts often brought the bailiffs to the door.

During Diana’s marriage to Guinness, she sought friendship with Dora Carrington and Lytton Strachey, scions of the Bloomsbury Set. She suffered greatly after Strachey’s death and Carrington’s subsequent suicide, which opened her eyes to the frailty of life and her own unhappiness.

Suddenly, the unlimited riches no longer interested her, and she was disgusted by Ramsay McDonald’s inability to support the poorest. She left Bryan in 1933 for the British fascist leader Oswald Mosley. Instead of leaning Left like Nancy and Decca, she followed Mosley’s siren call to the far Right and stood by him despite being humiliated when he took mistresses. The series will no doubt explore Diana’s influence on her sisters.

Unity, a domineering figure of a girl, played on-screen by Shannon Watson, whom Nancy said “was thick right down to her ankles”, liked to shock by stealing items from Buckingham Palace, such as writing paper and loo roll. Silly pranks turned into a dangerous game when Unity donned a Blackshirt (Mosley’s Fascist uniform), and went a step further by studying in Germany with the purpose of meeting Hitler.

Decca, who once worshipped Diana, opposed her and Unity’s politics and went to the opposite end of the spectrum; she later ran away with her second cousin, Esmond Romilly, who was reporting on the Spanish Civil War.

All of this became not only tabloid fodder but nuggets of gold for Nancy’s bestselling novels, The Pursuit Of Love and Love In A Cold Climate.

Debo, the youngest, claimed to love the person and not their politics. Her only vice was a later-in-life Elvis Presley obsession (she owned fragments of his fence from Graceland). But many British socialities were enthralled with Mosley and Hitler.

After the war, many had the good sense to denounce their views or remain silent in fear of being ostracised – “cancelled” in today’s terms. Although conflicted feelings ran deep, Nancy, who had volunteered as a fire watcher and helped displaced Jews from the East End during the Blitz, reported on Diana to the Home Office. All of Diana’s comings and goings to Nazi Germany to extract a loan from Hitler for Mosley’s failing party saw her as a national security threat and she was imprisoned under Regulation 18B.

There were further fallouts: the Redesdales separated due to Unity’s unpredictability after her suicide attempt and Lord Redesdale spent his remaining years in a relationship with his housekeeper.

How did it all end? Nancy poured all of the familial material into bestselling novels and carved out a successful writing career. Pamela divorced Derek Jackson and spent her days living with an Italian horsewoman, Guiditta Tomassi.

“My sister has become a you-know-what-bian,” Decca told her second husband, Bob Treauhaft. Diana lived in exile with Mosley, in the Republic of Ireland and France, close to the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Unity died from sepsis in 1948, having lived on Inch Kenneth, her mother’s private island off the coast of Mull in Scotland, where she conducted church sermons to an invisible congregation. Decca continued with her Communist views but later found fame and fortune as “Queen of the Muckrakers”, having written several investigative essays and books.

Debo married Andrew Cavendish and became the Duchess of Devonshire, using her title and skills to restore and open her husband’s family seat, Chatsworth House, to the public. Debo was the last surviving sister, dying in September 2014 aged 94.

With six girls and six character arcs, there is, surely, a Mitford for everyone. As with all good cautionary tales, they were mad, bad and dangerous to know. And yet, as infuriating as they were, then and now, they were never boring.

Lyndsy Spence is the founder of The Mitford Society and the author of The Mitford Girls’ Guide to Life (The History Press). Outrageous starts on Thursday on U and U&Drama