My idea had been to read 30 or 40 pages every day of this massive unwieldy tome of a book but when I started to read it I found that after 40 pages I just wanted to read on and on so within a couple of days I’ve reached page 320 which takes us up to the end of 1959, which, I have to say was a very good year for me anyway.

I’ve decided to blog about that first section of the book which begins in 1925. I’ll give you a bit of a summary of the family in case you don’t know about them. The Mitford parents were of course Lord and Lady Redesdale a sort of mis-matched couple belonging to what I think you could call the minor British aristocracy, rather than the first eleven such as the Devonshires. They are always written about as if they are terribly poor but it’s all comparative and I’m sure that when compared with the average family income at that time then they would have been very well off indeed, even after the financial troubles of the 1930s. The eccentric behaviour of Lord Redesdale in particular turned out to be great copy for his daughters who wrote about their unusual childhoods with their father hunting them across his fields with his dogs, to the horror of the villagers.

It was a time when the British public were obsessed with ‘their betters’ and as the six Mitford girls grew up they were hardly out of the newspaper gossip columns or magazine front pages. At least some of the Mitford girls did eventually earn their fame through their writing but for Diana and Unity it was their choice of men which brought them notoriety.

During the early 1930s they both became interested in fascist politicians, maybe I should say they were entranced. Diana was besotted with Sir Oswald Mosley, the already married leader of the British Fascist Party which led to lots of trouble and violence in streets as fascists and communists/socialists clashed in demonstrations. In the end he had to be imprisoned during World War II as he would have been likely to have helped the Nazis in any way that he could. The same fate befell Diana who was by that time married to him. The Mitfords were related to Winston Churchill and lots of other influential people so until then they had mixed in very high society, including that other couple of fascistic sewers/suars, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.

Unity was even more deluded than Diana as she was obsessed with Hitler and didn’t worry at all about the inhumanity of the Nazis. I hadn’t realised just how ‘pally’ she was with him and when you read that she wrote to Diana saying: Hitler had given her a flat which had belonged to a young Jewish couple who were going abroad. It’s horrific how matter of fact she was about it all. In fact just about the whole family seems to have met Hitler in Munich, including the parents, Lady Redesdale seems to have been won over to the Nazi cause and stayed that way until her death.

It was a time when lots of the so called aristocracy were on the far right side, just as they are now I suppose but a lot of the war time shenanigans were hushed up.

As you can imagine the early letters in this book can be fascinating, with Unity describing her visit to Berchtesgaden and that massive glass window, the biggest piece of glass in the world, with that breathtaking but somehow soulless view of the mountains. I hadn’t realised it could be wound down like a car window.

The sisters called each other by numerous family nicknames but there’s a list of them at the front of the book and I must admit that I did have to look a few times to see who was being written about. It’s not all politics and plenty of the letters are about family matters which often didn’t run smoothly. In fact there are plenty of real tragedies along the way, especially with children who came to grief, but it was the days of the stiff upper lip and these things are hardly mentioned at all.

The (Dowager) Duchess of Devonshire (Deborah Mitford) has had seven pregnancies I think, but only three living children to show for them all. It must have been heart-breaking for her. All that money and social position doesn’t really count for much when you get down to it.

Of course Deborah had married ‘the spare’ second son of the Duke of Devonshire but due to the heir being killed in the war her husband eventually became the duke. The eldest son had married one of the (JFK)Kennedy girls – Kathleen, known as Kick, and she came to grief too as so many of that clan did.

The letters are witty and gossipy, for instance, their nickname for the Queen Mother was – no not gin but ‘Cake’. I haven’t mentioned the communist sister yet, I’ll keep that for a later post. I’m enjoying the book so it seems like a quick read, despite the 804 pages, I just wish it was easier to read in bed.

Oh and my top tip – if you want to marry money, marry into a brewery family. The Guinness and Tennant families feature in the family tree and a Watney almost did – I kid you not!