Diana, Lady Mosley (née Mitford; 17 June 191011 August 2003) was a British aristocrat, fascist, writer and editor. She was one of the Mitford sisters and eventually, the wife of Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists.
Initially married to Bryan Guinness, heir to the barony of Moyne, with whom she was part of the Bright Young Things, a social group of young Bohemian socialites in 1920s London, her marriage ended in divorce as she was pursuing a relationship with Oswald Mosley. In 1936, she married Mosley at the home of the propaganda minister for Nazi Germany, Joseph Goebbels, with Adolf Hitler as a guest of honour. Her involvement with fascist political causes resulted in three years' internment during the Second World War, when Britain was at war with the fascist regime of Nazi Germany. She later moved to Paris and enjoyed some success as a writer. In the 1950s, she contributed diaries to Tatler and edited the magazine The European. In 1977, she published her autobiography, A Life of Contrasts, and two more biographies in the 1980s.
Mosley's 1989 appearance on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs was controversial due to her Holocaust denial and admiration of Hitler. She was also a regular book reviewer for Books and Bookmen and later at The Evening Standard in the 1990s. A family friend, James Lees-Milne, wrote of her beauty, "She was the nearest thing to Botticelli's Venus that I have ever seen". She was described as "unrepentant" about her previous political associations by obituary writers such as the historian Andrew Roberts.
Early life
Diana Mitford was the fourth child and third daughter of David Freeman-Mitford, 2nd Baron Redesdale (1878–1958), and his wife Sydney (1880–1963). She was a first cousin of Clementine Churchill, second cousin of Sir Angus Ogilvy, and first cousin, twice removed, of Bertrand Russell. She was raised in the country estate of Batsford Park, Gloucestershire, then from the age of 10 at the family home, Asthall Manor in Oxfordshire, and later at Swinbrook House, a home her father had built in the nearby village of Swinbrook.
She was educated at home by a series of governesses, except for a six-month period in 1926, when she was sent to a day school in Paris. In childhood, her younger sisters Jessica Mitford ("Decca") and Deborah ("Debo", later the Duchess of Devonshire), were particularly devoted to her. At the age of 18, shortly after her presentation at Court, she became secretly engaged to Bryan Walter Guinness.
Marriages
Guinness, an Irish aristocrat, writer and brewing heir, would inherit the barony of Moyne. Diana's parents were opposed to the engagement but in time were persuaded; Sydney was particularly uneasy at the thought of two such young people having possession of such a large fortune, but she was eventually convinced Bryan was a suitable husband. They married on 30 January 1929; her sisters Jessica and Deborah were too ill to attend the ceremony. The couple had an income of £20,000 a year, an estate at Biddesden in Wiltshire, and houses in London and Dublin. They were well known for hosting aristocratic society events involving the Bright Young People. The writer Evelyn Waugh exclaimed that her beauty "ran through the room like a peal of bells", and he dedicated the novel Vile Bodies to her. Her portrait was painted by Augustus John, Pavel Tchelitchew and Henry Lamb. She was one of a series of society beauties photographed as classical figures by Madame Yevonde. The couple had two sons, Jonathan (b. 1930) and Desmond (1931–2020).
In February 1932, Diana met Sir Oswald Mosley at a garden party at the home of the society hostess Emerald Cunard. He soon became leader of the newly formed British Union of Fascists and Diana became his lover; Mosley was then married to Lady Cynthia Mosley, a daughter of Lord Curzon, a former Viceroy of India, and his first wife, the American mercantile heiress Mary Victoria Leiter. Diana left her husband, "moving with a skeleton staff of nanny, cook, house-parlourmaid and lady's maid to a house at 2 Eaton Square, round the corner from Mosley's flat", but Sir Oswald would not leave his wife. Quite suddenly, Cynthia died in 1933 of peritonitis. Mosley was devastated by the death of his wife, but later started an affair with her younger sister, Lady Alexandra Metcalfe.