Rich man, poor man, communist, facist

At the beginning, it was rather like a bizarre round of ‘Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor’. Decca ran away to the Spanish civil war; Unity went to Munich and made friends with Hitler; Diana bolted with the founder of English Fascism and then went to prison; Pamela stayed at home; Debo ended up with Chatsworth; and Nancy wrote some very good books. The Mitford sisters’ fame originated, mostly, in newspaper scandals of the 1930s, to the horror of their parents, who believed that a gentlewoman’s name should appear in newspapers only twice, on her marriage and on her death. (According to Decca, Lady Redesdale grew to dread the sight of the words ‘Peer’s Daughter’ in newsprint, as well she might.)

They did unusually interesting things between them, and their lives often seem to reduce the passions of the 1930s to a disconcertingly human level. ‘Poor sweet Führer, he’s having such a dreadful time,’ Unity writes at one point.