← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Hilaire Belloc
Thread ID: 8990 | Posts: 6 | Started: 2003-08-13
2003-08-13 02:50 | User Profile
** [url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/3146225.stm]http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/3146225.stm[/url]
Oswald Mosley's wife dies Diana Mosley, the former wife of 1930s British fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley, has died aged 93. She died on Monday in Paris, according to a death notice published in The Times newspaper.
The notice, in the deaths column, read "MOSLEY - On 11th August 2003, Diana widow of Sir Oswald Mosley Bt peacefully in Paris, aged 93."
A spokesman for the estate of her sister Deborah, the Duchess of Devonshire, said: "We can confirm that she died peacefully but we cannot say any more than that."
Diana Mosley was born into the aristocratic Mitford family on 17 June, 1910.
Winston Churchill, Evelyn Waugh and John Betjeman were among her circle of friends.
She was 18 when she married one of the Guinness heirs, Bryan Guinness, but three years later she met Mosley and left her husband to become his mistress.
She married the founder of the British Union of Fascists in Joseph Goebbels's drawing room in 1936. Adolf Hitler was a guest.
The Nazi dictator described her as an "angel" and the Mosley couple made frequent trips to Germany, attending the Nuremberg rallies.
By 1940, their links to Hitler caused them to be viewed as outcasts.
Sir Oswald Mosley was arrested and she joined him behind bars at Holloway Prison in London, where they remained until being released in 1943 on the grounds of his ill-health.
MI5 documents released in November last year revealed that the security services regarded Diana Mosley as the greater threat.
One report read: "Diana Mosley, wife of Sir Oswald Mosley, is reported on the best authority, that of her family and intimate circle, to be a public danger at the present time.
'Wildly ambitious'
"Is said to be far cleverer and more dangerous than her husband and will stick at nothing to achieve her ambitions. She is wildly ambitious."
Her sister, Unity Mitford, was also an admirer of Hitler and was described as "more Nazi than the Nazis".
Unity shot herself when World War II began, causing herself severe brain damage, and she died in 1948 from her injuries.
The Mosleys moved to France in the 1950s.
Sir Oswald died in 1980 and as a widow, Mosley remained in Paris to continue her husband's work. **
:crybaby: :crybaby:
2003-08-13 03:34 | User Profile
[SIZE=3]R.I.P.[/SIZE]
2003-08-14 09:07 | User Profile
Diana Mosley was blind for at least the last twenty years of her life, but still considered the most beautiful of the Mitford sisters. They were an odd lot; Jessica Mitford became a Commie, then an American, then simply a pest writing books critical of America's funeral business and so on.
Unity was by far the most controversial when she left home to be a nazi in Germany, at one point telling the British press: "Yes, I am a Jew-hater!" She participated in the Nuremburg rally quite prominently (in uniform, no less!) and according to one biographer, (David Pryce-Jones, I believe) had an affair with Adolf Hitler. As odd as this might seem, Pryce-Jones produces witness affidavits and Eva Braun mentions Unity with some foreboding in her diary. (The idea that Hitler was "not capable of normal sexual relations with a woman" is a fantasy of World War II psychologists in America.)
Unity was distraught when war was declared between Germany and England. She was torn between her adopted country and her homeland, and in despair went to the English Garden in Berlin and shot herself in the head. She lived but never really knew what was going on after that.
Diana wrote a biography that is little-known but had an American publication. She never apologized or broke with her husband after his death, defending him in her book and elsewhere. Whether this is Old Class aristocrat loyalty or whether she was simply an honorable woman I cannot say; I will say that Oswald Mosely was a very luck man. If the universe is the slightest bit just they are together now in a place that values the honor gained by the incredible courage which both of them had.
2003-08-14 14:18 | User Profile
Ragnar,
Yes those Mitford sisters were an odd lot.
Nancy Mitford's Love in a Cold Climate.
**Love in a Cold Climate.
Introduction The story we begin tonight is adapted from two novels written shortly after World War II by Nancy Mitford. She was one of the famous Mitford sisters and we'll talk a little more about them later. But for now it's enough to say that there were six of them -- most of them either talented or scandalous -- and some of them both. Nancy was the oldest. She was of the generation that came of age during the cynical years after the first world war and belonged to a ruling class that had begun to seem a bit silly even to itself. She was one of the light-headed daughters of the very best people whom Evelyn Waugh satirized as "the bright young things." In fact Nancy and Waugh became close friends and both viewed the world with the same satirical zest for the absurd -- at least until middle-age solemnity set in. It had not yet set in for Nancy when she wrote The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate. What she produced was a story light as a good soufflé and tart as a dry martini.
. . .
Conclusion It would take a book to deal with the fascinating lives of Nancy Mitford, the creator of tonight's story, and her five sisters. In fact, several books have been written on the subject, including a couple by the sisters themselves. One of them, Diana, married the leader of the British fascist party and spent two years in prison when he was interned in World War II. Another daughter, Unity, fell in love with Nazism, and then with Hitler. A third, Jessica, moved to California and outraged the American funeral industry with a critical book called The American Way of Death. Nancy was the first-born and the story she tells of Linda's affair with Fabrice is very close to the story of her own love affair with Colonel Gaston Palewski.
They did not meet on a railway platform in Paris but at a garden party in London, and he was not executed by the Germans but lived to a happy old age -- always in love with Nancy but in a detached fashion. He had always been an insatiable lover of women -- any and all women -- and he made no effort to conceal it from Nancy.
For a while she hoped they might marry, but she gradually conceded that he was born to be a lover not a husband, and accepted him as such in return for the pleasure they took in each other's company. When she died (in 1973) at the age of 68 he was at her bedside.
I'm Russell Baker, goodnight. [url=http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/climate/]http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/climate/[/url]**
**"As girls in the 1930s, Jessica and Unity shared a room. One end was decorated with Unity's fascist insignia of all kinds while at the other end Jessica displayed her Communist library, copies of the Daily Worker, and a small bust of Lenin. The rest of the family regarded this ideological war as an amusing childish game rather than a sign of the way in which the family would be divided in the future." **
2003-08-14 14:51 | User Profile
Originally posted by Ragnar@Aug 14 2003, 03:07 * *Diana Mosley was blind for at least the last twenty years of her life, but still considered the most beautiful of the Mitford sisters. They were an odd lot; Jessica Mitford became a Commie, then an American, then simply a pest writing books critical of America's funeral business and so on.
Unity was by far the most controversial when she left home to be a nazi in Germany, at one point telling the British press: "Yes, I am a Jew-hater!" She participated in the Nuremburg rally quite prominently (in uniform, no less!) and according to one biographer, (David Pryce-Jones, I believe) had an affair with Adolf Hitler. As odd as this might seem, Pryce-Jones produces witness affidavits and Eva Braun mentions Unity with some foreboding in her diary. (The idea that Hitler was "not capable of normal sexual relations with a woman" is a fantasy of World War II psychologists in America.)
Unity was distraught when war was declared between Germany and England. She was torn between her adopted country and her homeland, and in despair went to the English Garden in Berlin and shot herself in the head. She lived but never really knew what was going on after that.
Diana wrote a biography that is little-known but had an American publication. She never apologized or broke with her husband after his death, defending him in her book and elsewhere. Whether this is Old Class aristocrat loyalty or whether she was simply an honorable woman I cannot say; I will say that Oswald Mosely was a very luck man. If the universe is the slightest bit just they are together now in a place that values the honor gained by the incredible courage which both of them had.**
Well said, Ragnar.
2003-08-14 14:57 | User Profile
New thread:
The Mitford Sisters [url=http://forum.originaldissent.com/index.php?showtopic=10280]http://forum.originaldissent.com/index.php...showtopic=10280[/url]