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0:30

I met her in the Osteria

0:34

Bavaria. She was very romantic.

0:37

The

0:42

Osteria was a small inn. It's still there

0:44

and it hasn't changed much. Small tables.

0:47

There was a wooden partition and behind it a table

0:50

to seat eight. An adjutant would

0:52

phone the owner to warn that Hitler might

0:54

be coming and to have the table clear. There

0:57

was also a courtyard with one table under

0:59

a pergola and this was Hitler's

1:01

favourite seat when the weather was not cold.

1:04

Unity was quite often there. I

1:07

was

1:07

invited only every second or third

1:09

time. Like me, Mittfud

1:11

would be invited by the adjutant Schaube.

1:14

She was highly in love with Hitler.

1:16

We could see it easily. Her face brightened

1:19

up. Her eyes gleaming, staring

1:21

at Hitler.

1:22

Hero worship. Absolutely

1:24

phenomenal. And possibly Hitler

1:27

liked to be admired by a young woman. She

1:29

was quite attractive. Even

1:31

if nothing happened, he was excited by

1:34

the possibility of a love affair with her. Towards

1:37

an attractive woman, he behaved

1:39

as a 17 year old would. So

1:42

that was International Man

1:44

of Mystery and all-round villain

1:46

Rudolf Hess talking

1:49

about Unity Mittfud. And

1:51

Tom,

1:52

we ended last time

1:54

with the British fascist movement. I think it's

1:56

fair to say in the doldrums World War

1:58

II had broken out.

1:59

A lot of the leading fascists, but not all

2:02

of the aristocrats, but a lot of the other leading

2:04

fascists, including Sir Oswald Mosley, have been

2:06

put into prison. But we're now going

2:09

to backtrack a little bit because

2:11

you're very keen to tell the story of

2:13

the person you regard as Britain's most

2:16

notorious Nazi, and I say Nazi,

2:18

not British fascists because this is

2:21

somebody, as we've just heard, in

2:23

that sort of Barbara Cartland-esque prose.

2:26

Yes. She's not at Cable Street.

2:28

She's not going to grimy meetings

2:31

of the sort of scum-thought branch of the BUF.

2:34

She is actually there in Germany with

2:36

the Fuhrer, and that's Unity Mitford. It is.

2:39

I mean, she is probably, I mean,

2:41

not probably, she is the British

2:43

person who has the most

2:45

access to Hitler. I mean, possibly

2:47

of any foreigner, she has

2:50

meetings with Hitler over 140 times. And

2:52

I would go further and say that although obviously

2:55

Oswald Mosley, and indeed Unity

2:57

Mitford's sister Diana, who marries

2:59

Oswald Mosley, are more significant

3:01

figures within the history of British fascism, I would

3:04

say that Unity Mitford is probably

3:06

the best known British fascist

3:09

among the general public, simply because there is

3:11

such a fascination, enduring

3:13

fascination with the Mitford sisters.

3:16

And so I think that it's worth having

3:18

an episode on her, partly because

3:20

of the inherent fascination of the story. I mean, she

3:22

is an intriguing figure,

3:25

but also because I think the fact that a

3:27

self-avowed Nazi can

3:30

be integrated into a crucial part

3:32

of the heritage industry is really, really

3:35

interesting. So the first biography

3:37

that was written of Unity Mitford, one

3:39

of the six famous Mitford sisters, was

3:41

by a man called David Price Jones in 1977. And

3:44

he subtitled it The Frivolity of Evil,

3:47

which is a play on the banality

3:49

of evil. I think a brilliant title. And

3:51

I think that there is a sense perhaps in

3:54

which part of the appeal of fascism

3:56

and by extension Nazism in 1930s

3:58

Britain, there is an element of that. of that, the

4:00

frivolity of it. Do you think among

4:02

the upper classes? Well, I think

4:05

we talked in the last three episodes

4:07

about the paranoia among much of the upper

4:09

classes. So there are definitely people

4:11

out there, I don't know, in the 1920s the Duke of Northumberland,

4:14

very rich, very entitled people

4:16

who feel genuinely almost hysterically

4:19

afraid of Bolshevism and of sellout

4:22

by the mainstream political parties and so on. But in the

4:24

case of the Mitfords, I agree with you, there's

4:26

a slight sense of incredibly sinister

4:30

role playing that has got out of control.

4:32

But I think the fascinating thing you said about

4:34

the heritage industry, so I live, there's lots

4:37

of listeners well known in North Oxfordshire, very

4:39

close to the Mitford family estate.

4:42

And there are walking tours, there are Mitford walking

4:44

tours. I know people, I mean, I

4:47

know people Tom otherwise sane,

4:49

well adjusted people who are obsessed with the Mitfords,

4:52

who love the Mitford sisters, who like going to

4:54

the graveyard and seeing the Mitford's graves,

4:56

who have lots of books on the Mitfords. Now for a lot

4:58

of our overseas listeners, this will all be babble,

5:00

they won't know who the Mitfords are. So perhaps you should

5:02

explain just who this extraordinary

5:05

family are and why they have this hold over the British

5:07

imagination. Okay, so the Mitfords are a very ancient

5:10

family. They had lands in England even

5:12

before the Norman Conquest given to them by Edward

5:14

the Confessor up in Northumberland, very near

5:16

my Scottish estate as it happens on the banks

5:18

of Tweets. But there's a kind

5:21

of junior family from Hampshire and these

5:23

are the ones that end up with lands in

5:25

the Cotswolds. And the thing

5:27

about the Mitfords is there are aspects

5:30

of their heritage that seem

5:32

to precondition them for a particular

5:34

interest in Nazism. So I'll

5:37

go through Unity Mitford's grandparents.

5:39

So her grandfather on her father's

5:41

side, so that's the Mitford side, he

5:44

was a very distinguished diplomat, served in Japan

5:46

and all over the world, incredible

5:48

linguist and he became a very good friend of Richard

5:51

Wagner. He went to Bayreuth, he

5:53

saw all the Wagnerian operas including

5:55

the Valkyri. So all these operas that Hitler

5:58

was obsessed with? Absolutely. So Hitler's Hitler

6:00

will come to know this and they tell the story of

6:02

statuesque goddesses, blonde

6:05

hair, who gallop around on horses picking up

6:07

the fallen dead and taking them to Valhalla. While

6:10

he's at Beethoven he meets Houston Stewart

6:12

Chamberlain Dominic who we've had cause dimension

6:14

in this series and indeed in the

6:16

episode that we did on the rise of the Nazis. So

6:18

he is British but he becomes actually

6:21

in 1916 so during the First World

6:23

War he becomes a naturalized German subject

6:26

and he is vehemently

6:29

anti-Semitic and the Mitford

6:31

sisters grandfather translates his

6:34

book The Foundations of the 19th Century into English

6:36

and he'd written it in German. So you

6:38

know there's a bit of history there. Her paternal

6:41

grandmother was

6:43

the sister of Clementine

6:46

Churchill's mother so the woman who Clementine

6:48

who married Winston Churchill. So

6:51

that's an additional part of the mix

6:54

and the Mitford sisters in fact often go to Chartwell

6:57

to see cousin Winston and Churchill

6:59

wasn't particularly interested in most of the

7:01

Mitford sisters although he admired Diana

7:04

who was by some way the most beautiful and Randolph

7:06

his son has a massive massive crush on Diana

7:09

as pretty much everyone in London

7:12

society does. So their grandfather

7:14

on their mother's side he was also an

7:16

absolutely massive anti-semite. He

7:19

goes on a journey through the Holy Land goes to Jerusalem

7:21

and he says of the Jews if they have been expelled

7:24

from Jerusalem they are the rulers of London,

7:26

Paris and Berlin and his

7:29

daughter said that the mother of the

7:31

Mitford, Sydney, seems to have inherited

7:34

this instinctive anti-Semitism although she

7:36

was a great admirer of

7:38

the Mosaic dietary laws because she

7:41

firmly believed that Jews never got cancer and

7:43

attributed this to their not eating pork or

7:45

shellfish. So she... That's a

7:48

very unusual medical opinion

7:50

isn't it? Yes. So

7:53

their father David who

7:56

in Nancy Mitford's pursuit of love is

7:58

uncle Matthew. hates

8:01

foreigners, damn foreigners, all that kind

8:03

of thing. So he becomes Lord Reedsdale when

8:05

his brother dies in the in the First

8:07

World War. So he's the younger son but inherits

8:09

the title because his brother dies. He is a spectacularly

8:13

hopeless investor. Every investment

8:15

he makes goes wrong and at one point he

8:18

decides to go gold prospecting in Canada. So

8:21

he buys a gold mine at

8:24

a place called Swastika. You couldn't make that

8:26

up could you? And beyond parody. He goes out

8:28

there with Sydney, his wife,

8:31

and there Sydney conceives

8:33

their fourth daughter and

8:35

fifth child who when she is born

8:38

is given the name not just of

8:40

unity but of Valkyrie. So

8:43

after D. Valkyrie. Yeah. On the recommendation

8:45

of her paternal grandfather. So she is unity

8:48

Valkyrie Mitford. And so

8:50

all of this is giving her a certain

8:53

pedigree, a certain heritage. So she

8:55

is one of seven children. So the oldest

8:57

is Nancy in 1903, Pamela in 1987, Pamela

9:00

is the boring one, Tom 1909, he's the male one, Diana in 1910, she's

9:05

the beautiful one. And then there is

9:08

a gap of four years and so unity

9:10

is born in 1914 during the

9:12

First World War which makes the fact that

9:15

she's given this name of Valkyrie all the more extraordinary.

9:17

And then you have Jessica who comes

9:19

to be known as Decker and then Deborah who comes

9:21

to be known as Debo. So it's an

9:23

amazing accumulation of children. Yeah.

9:26

And all of them will have astonishing

9:28

careers which is why they are objects

9:30

of such popular fascination. But I think in for

9:32

our purposes by Miles the most interesting

9:35

one is unity because she goes even further

9:37

than Diana. Even further than Diana who's actually married

9:39

the leader of the British Union of Fascists. And in

9:41

fact because unity Jessica

9:43

and Deborah are born, you know,

9:46

several years after Diana, they

9:48

are kind of grouped together as the young girls.

9:51

And so they all slightly live in Diana's

9:53

shadow. Diana is incredibly beautiful,

9:55

incredibly glamorous and so

9:58

unity I think in particular. feels

10:00

that she has to show off if she is going

10:02

to make a mark. And so that's what she does. And

10:05

her character is enhanced by the fact

10:07

that compared to the other girls, she is very

10:09

big bone. She's very gallumphing. I

10:13

sat you ask you might want to say, and

10:15

she has these kind of incredibly

10:18

large, baleful eyes.

10:21

And she developed the technique of sitting at table,

10:24

slowly shuffling mashed potato into

10:26

her mouth, gazing at her father. And

10:29

her father would become more and more furious

10:31

by this. And he'd bellow at her, stop staring at

10:33

me. And she would continue to stare at him. Then

10:36

he would absolutely explode. And she would slide

10:38

under the table and stay there and refuse to come out.

10:40

And she obviously took a pleasure in

10:43

rallying her father to a condition of

10:45

absolute fury. And I think

10:47

there's a sense in which of all the girls, she is perhaps

10:50

the most difficult to handle. So the restales,

10:52

like a lot of aristocratic families at

10:54

this time, did not approve of sending

10:57

their daughters to school. They saw that as vulgar.

10:59

Yeah, Nancy Mitford said of her father

11:01

that he thought one got thick calves from playing hockey.

11:03

He didn't want that at all. Yeah, but they find

11:06

unity so stressful to have around that they do actually

11:08

send her to school. And on both

11:10

occasions, she ends up being expelled. And

11:13

the final time she's 17, Lord Reesdale

11:15

himself goes to the school to try and persuade

11:18

the headmistress to take her back and the headmistress

11:20

refuses. Meanwhile, as

11:23

unity is kind of going to school

11:25

being expelled, coming out of school

11:27

wondering what to do. Diana

11:29

is out there. She is a society

11:32

beauty. She's a bright young thing. She's

11:34

married Brian Guinness, who's fabulously rich,

11:37

even war is dedicating wild bodies to her.

11:40

And for unity, you can see that

11:42

this makes her even more glamorous than she'd

11:44

been when they were children. And she

11:46

kind of like a moth drawn to a

11:49

flame, she immediately starts hanging

11:51

out with Diana. Yeah. And thinking,

11:53

you know, this is the person who I want to

11:56

impress. So 1932, she comes

12:00

out, which doesn't mean that she doesn't

12:03

have the connotation that it has today. It means

12:05

that she joins this kind of circle of gals

12:07

who are upper class, who are

12:10

being presented at the court, who are circulating

12:12

around various dances

12:14

and parties and so on with the aim of meeting

12:17

a handsome young man. But unity,

12:19

she cuts a tremendous dash. So the Daily

12:21

Express in the summer

12:23

of 1932 comments on her that

12:25

she was the prettiest girl. Because it's

12:28

a bit like red carpets today. People

12:30

are interested in debutantes, devs,

12:32

and so on. But unity

12:36

is, I think, an intimidating figure

12:38

to men. She's very, as

12:40

I said, statuesque. She has a fondness

12:43

for stunts. She has

12:45

a rat, ratula, which she keeps

12:47

in her handbag. And at dances, she will take

12:49

it out and stroke it. That's very Ron Weasley

12:52

behaviour, Tom, for Harry Potter listeners.

12:54

She also has a snake called Enid. And

12:57

the story goes that she kind of will on occasion

12:59

wear it instead of a necklace. Now,

13:01

I'm not entirely convinced whether that's true. These stories

13:04

seem to come from her younger sister, Jessica, who

13:06

is prone to exaggeration. And the

13:08

simple reason I'm hesitant about that

13:10

applying all my historical acumen is

13:12

that I think rats and snakes don't necessarily

13:15

get on well. Well, Theo, our producer says this

13:17

is all very Nazi behaviour. I mean, this is very

13:19

good for Nazis in an Indiana Jones film. Except

13:21

that at this point, unity still has absolutely

13:24

no interest in politics, let alone

13:26

in fascism. But 1932

13:29

is the year in which Diana Guinness,

13:32

as she is by this point, starts her

13:34

affair with Oswald Mosley.

13:37

And unity is kind of coming along in

13:39

the train so that actually, you know, they all go

13:41

to a ball hosted by Lady Rothschild, who

13:44

is obviously a very significant Jewish

13:46

society figure. Yeah, neither Diana

13:49

nor unity have any problem with this at

13:51

all. But by October 32, Mosley

13:54

is starting to go full fascist. So he's putting on

13:56

the black shirts, he's holding his rallies. You know, we talked

13:58

about this in the previous Exactly. Yes.

14:01

Meanwhile, Unity is, she's

14:03

still oblivious to this. She's become

14:05

an art student. She actually seems to have been very good at art.

14:08

And you could imagine her becoming a kind

14:10

of bohemian figure, a posh bohemian

14:13

figure. Yeah. I love

14:15

posh bohemian figures as you know, Tom. I

14:17

know you do, Dominic. I know you do. But

14:19

we talked in the previous episode how Moseley's

14:22

wife Simmi, who is the daughter

14:24

of Lord Curzon, even as Oswald

14:27

Moseley is having his affair with Diana, she

14:29

falls very dangerously ill. So she gets

14:31

out of birth appendix, Moseley goes

14:33

to hospital with her, spends the morning

14:36

with her, then goes out and has lunch

14:38

with Diana. And Unity

14:40

is with Diana. And she

14:43

is immediately besotted

14:45

with him, idolizes him, calls

14:48

him the leader, joins the fascists,

14:51

and becomes actually, you know, you were saying that

14:53

she's not out there walking the

14:55

streets. Actually, she does start walking the streets. She

14:58

starts selling the black shirt on the streets of Oxford.

15:00

She takes it quite seriously. Yeah. Although

15:03

seriousness with the Mitfords is always relative.

15:05

So there's a brilliant account by

15:07

Anthony Rumbold, who's the son of Horace Rumbold,

15:09

who was ambassador to Germany in the build up

15:12

to the Nazis taking power. And he goes

15:14

down to Swinbrook, the Mitford estate,

15:16

which is lovely, by the way, in Swinbrook is a beautiful

15:19

village. David Cameron went there

15:21

with Francois Hollande for a pint. So if you

15:23

go to the top, there's pictures in the wall of Cameron

15:25

Hollande. Yeah, I bet he did. Anyway,

15:28

so Unity is there with Jessica,

15:30

the communist, and the two girls

15:33

set on this this poor chap, Anthony Rumbold,

15:35

and say, Are you a fascist or a communist? And he

15:37

says, Well, I'm neither. I believe in

15:39

democracy. And they answer, How

15:42

wet? Oh, God, which is

15:44

very, very Mitford. So actually, Unity

15:47

seems to you know, she's thrown

15:49

herself wholeheartedly into

15:51

fascism in exactly the way that her younger sister

15:54

Jessica has become an absolutely committed

15:56

Stalinist. They're both very into their

15:58

respective dictatorial figures. But

16:00

I think there is a sense in which for

16:02

unity that the tragic around

16:05

street selling fascist magazines is

16:07

already becoming boring. And she

16:09

is already thinking, I want to go beyond

16:12

what Diana has by this point has bagged

16:14

Oswald Mosley, they haven't got married, but they're

16:16

clearly together. She's thinking, how can

16:19

I go one better than Diana? And

16:21

of course, Diana has her fascist

16:23

leader, but there's an even more significant

16:25

fascist leader who unity

16:27

decides to go after. So just before we

16:30

get into that, can I just ask a slightly

16:32

serious question? I mean, this is such a, these

16:35

are such unserious people, I think that

16:37

it seems weird to ask serious question, but I'll do it anyway.

16:39

So we talked a little bit earlier in the episode about other

16:41

aristocrats who are drawn to fascism

16:43

because of because of fear because of their kind of paranoia

16:46

and whatnot. With Unity Mitford, you

16:48

haven't mentioned her at any point reading a book, for

16:50

example, is she somebody who

16:53

is this is frivolity that has got

16:55

completely out of hand, the frivolity of evil, or is there

16:57

any seriousness and ideal, genuine

17:00

ideological commitment to this at all? I

17:02

think at this stage, it's absolutely

17:05

frivolity, a desire to shock. I

17:07

think with Diana, who's very bright,

17:10

very well read, very, very smart,

17:12

I think it is thought through. I think that she

17:14

commits herself to Oswald Mosley, not

17:17

just because he's incredibly good-looking and charismatic,

17:19

but also because she completely comes to believe

17:22

in what he's saying. Right. So

17:24

she is a thinker. Unity is not a thinker.

17:26

It seems to be much more instinctive.

17:29

So Nancy Mitford, the eldest of the

17:32

Mitford girls who will become very famous novelist,

17:34

one of her novels, she gives a portrait

17:36

of unity as a fascist and

17:39

compares her to the suffragettes,

17:42

says that in an earlier age, her yearning

17:44

for a cause, the sense that she wants to be part

17:46

of something bigger than herself might well have

17:48

led her to campaign for votes for women. And

17:51

I think that maybe a few

17:53

decades later, she might become a kind of

17:55

Marianne faithful equivalent. She might become

17:57

post-groupie. She's going to have a Mick Jagger. Exactly.

18:00

So I think that she is looking for kind

18:03

of charismatic men. I think she's

18:05

looking for excitement. She wants

18:07

to shock. I mean, I think all these kind

18:09

of elements that you can see very

18:11

much in the way that people behave in the 60s.

18:14

I think it's already there in the 30s, which may

18:16

well be why people, you know, through the 60s

18:18

and into the present day identify with them so strongly.

18:21

There's something quite 60s

18:23

about their whole attitude. But

18:25

obviously with Unity, it goes

18:27

in a very, very dark direction.

18:30

And she gets her opportunity to meet

18:32

Hitler, because in August 1933,

18:36

she travels to Nuremberg

18:38

as part of a delegation of British fascists

18:40

that actually includes William Joyce, who will

18:43

go on to become Lord Hawore again, who we just talked

18:45

about in earlier episodes. And at Nuremberg,

18:48

Unity sees Hitler.

18:50

And she says of him, the first moment

18:52

I saw him, I knew there was no one I would rather

18:55

meet. Right.

18:56

Very good. Love at first sight. Lovely voice.

18:58

So she goes back to England. And this is

19:00

when Nancy spoofs her because she

19:03

is going around mooning

19:05

over Hitler in the way that she

19:07

might have done in the 60s over Mick Jagger. So

19:10

she is giving the Hitler

19:12

salute to everyone. You know, she'll go down to the post

19:14

office and click her heels. And

19:17

say, hi, Hitler. And it's all very

19:19

odd. And say for Jessica, her

19:21

younger sister, who's the communist, who

19:23

you think would be vehemently opposed

19:26

to this on one level she is, but it's still a

19:28

bit of a game. It's like they've kind of chosen their

19:30

rival pop stars. You know, Unity's chosen Mick Jagger.

19:33

Jessica's chosen Paul McCartney. And this obsession

19:36

leads to her the following year. So in the spring of 1934, going

19:39

to Munich, where she knows Hitler has

19:41

his main base. And she enrolled

19:43

in a language school right next door to

19:46

the Nazi headquarters. And

19:48

she is joined by Diana

19:51

all that summer, all that autumn she spends hanging

19:53

out in the Austria Bavaria, as described

19:56

by Rudolf Hess. She goes to the Nuremberg

19:58

rallies, you know, again, a bit like a going to

20:00

a Glastonbury or something, get caught

20:02

up in the excitement of the crowd. She's wearing

20:04

her black shirt. She becomes

20:07

an object of absolute fascination to all the

20:09

SS officers. You know, this very

20:12

Valkyrie-like, fascist, blonde

20:14

aristocrat in her fascist

20:16

uniform. She's advised by them, don't wear

20:19

too much makeup. Hitler doesn't like makeup,

20:21

so she watches that very carefully. 10 months

20:23

after she started going to the Austria

20:26

Bavaria,

20:27

finally someone comes over and says, the

20:29

Führer would like to meet you. She

20:31

goes over to hang out with Hitler, and

20:34

she writes to her father, to Lord Reesdale, it

20:37

was the most wonderful and beautiful day of my life.

20:39

I mean, what on earth is going

20:41

on in her head when she's meeting Hitler, when she's hanging

20:44

around with these people who already at this stage,

20:46

for the avoidance of doubt, who already

20:48

steeped in violence and in bloodshed, and

20:50

have made no secret

20:53

of their, I mean, frankly, anyone who's

20:55

read Mein Kampf or Hitler's speeches in the

20:57

1920s will know, and we discussed this on our Rise

21:00

of the Nazis series, they have made no secret

21:02

of their general side lambitions.

21:04

So what on earth is she thinking? So she

21:06

does have a copy of Mein Kampf signed by Hitler,

21:09

and also signed by pretty much every other luminary

21:11

in the Third Reich, like a kind of autograph book.

21:14

Right. The question of what she's thinking. So

21:16

Nancy Mitford, who remained

21:19

devoted to her, even though Nancy was very much on

21:21

the left, she wrote later about unity that

21:23

with her, the whole Nazi thing seemed to be a joke. She

21:25

was great fun. She used to drive around Central Europe

21:28

in the uniform with a gun. Unity was absolutely unpolitical.

21:31

No one knew less about politics than she did.

21:33

And the classic posh dilettante

21:36

is get out. Oh, it's great fun. We

21:38

knew nothing about politics. So I think there is an

21:40

element of that. I think there is an element,

21:42

oh, it's all tremendous laugh, and

21:44

if people are shocked, then so much the better. I

21:47

think there is also undoubtedly

21:49

a sense of kind of erotic fascination, particularly

21:51

with the SS and the storm troopers,

21:53

as she calls them, the darling storms. Oh,

21:56

Jesus. And

22:00

when she comes back after one trip to Munich,

22:02

the family nanny who rejoices

22:05

in the splendid name of Blore, I

22:07

do wish you wouldn't keep going to Germany, darling.

22:10

All those men. She

22:13

certainly identified something that's going on. But

22:15

I think you're absolutely right that to say she's

22:17

in an erotic daze or it's

22:19

all just a tremendous laugh or she's doing it to shock

22:23

does not excuse her because

22:25

she goes full in on the darkest aspects

22:28

of Nazism. She knows that if she's

22:31

going to keep Hitler's attention, she has

22:33

to keep herself kind of absolutely

22:36

within his gaze. She has to nail her

22:38

colors to the Nazi mast. And so she

22:40

does this by taking up with a

22:42

man who even by the standards of the Nazis is

22:44

a monster, Julius Streicher, who

22:46

edits the Stömer, the Stormtrooper.

22:49

A man who, you know, shaven head, moustache,

22:52

looks like a thug. And, you know, to put it into

22:54

context, at the Nuremberg trials, the other

22:56

Nazis kind of avoided Streicher because they regarded

22:58

him not only as vulgar, but as they regarded

23:00

him as a monster. I mean, that's the kind of person we're

23:03

talking about. Yes. And also

23:05

quite a lot of people in Britain

23:08

from her aristocratic circle say, but he's

23:10

so common. But I think there's an element

23:13

in which the Mitford's are so posh that

23:15

that doesn't bother them. You can imagine George

23:18

Orwell, for instance, tying himself in up in knots

23:20

about this. Feeling incredibly embarrassed.

23:22

But for the Mitford's, there's a sense in which

23:25

the fact that so many of the Nazis are

23:27

very non-U. Yeah, to use Nancy Mitford's

23:30

terminology, U and non-U. U is acceptable, 7%

23:33

of the population, and non-U is the other 93%. So,

23:36

Unity feels absolutely no requirement to

23:38

kind of compromise with her own upper-class mores

23:41

or behavior, because she knows that

23:43

actually people like Streicher will love

23:45

that. Right. So there's a kind of sense

23:47

of a commonality between the upper classes and

23:49

the lower classes that, again, someone

23:51

like Orwell would never be able

23:54

to buy into. He'd be far too embarrassed about it. So

23:56

Unity goes in big with Streicher, who is,

23:58

you know, in charge of the press, so

24:01

he's quite a significant figure for Mosley.

24:03

And so when Mosley gives

24:06

a speech in Leicester, Stryker

24:08

sends him a telegram saying, you know, congratulations,

24:11

I very much approve of the speech you gave. And

24:13

Mosley sends him a telegram back

24:15

saying, the power of Jewish corruption must be destroyed

24:17

in all countries before peace and justice can be

24:19

successfully achieved in Europe. So he's

24:21

going in big on the anti-Semitism

24:23

as well. And actually intriguingly, that apparently

24:26

was not quoted in the Lord Skidulsky

24:28

biography. It was quoted in the David

24:30

Price Jones biography of unity, caused

24:32

quite a stir. But I mean, Mosley definitely

24:34

sent it. And there's a sense in which unity

24:37

is acting as a broker between

24:40

the significant power players in Nazi

24:42

Germany and the British Union of Fascists.

24:45

And it's interesting that this is the exact point when Mosley

24:47

is beginning 1934 or so, 1935, Mosley

24:51

is going all in on the anti-Semitism himself,

24:53

something that he hadn't really mentioned

24:56

in 1932 when he set up the British Union of

24:58

Fascists. So I wonder whether his sister-in-law,

25:00

presumably his wife, they're all in this atmosphere

25:03

of increasing anti-Semitism. I think Diana

25:05

and Mosley definitely less so. And

25:08

you can tell that because you just have to look at what unity

25:10

is doing, who is going full in. So

25:12

she writes a letter to D'Sderma

25:16

in which she says, we urgently need a publication like

25:18

Sterma to tell the people the truth. They will

25:20

soon see it is to be hoped that in England too,

25:22

we shall be victorious over the world enemy

25:24

in spite of his cunning. So she's talking about the Jews

25:27

there. We look forward to the day on which

25:29

we shall declare with full power and might England

25:31

for the English, Jews out

25:33

with German greetings. Heil Hitler,

25:36

Unity Mitford, P.S.

25:38

If you should happen to find room in your paper

25:40

for this letter, please print my name in full.

25:43

I do not want my letter initialed to U.M. For

25:45

everyone should know that I am a Jew hater.

25:48

So she is absolutely

25:52

pinning her colours to the mass. And

25:54

Stryker, when he prints this letter, which he does, he

25:56

blazes it over his newspaper. He

25:59

also makes sure to tell his readers

26:01

that unity is related to Winston Churchill

26:04

and this makes her incredibly newsworthy

26:07

in Britain, in Germany and

26:09

of course it achieves exactly what

26:11

unity wants it to achieve namely it

26:14

gives her credibility with Hitler. Well Tom before we

26:16

started I said I made it very clear to you that I disapproved

26:19

very strongly of the Mitford's and I'm I

26:21

have to say that nothing you've said in the last

26:23

half hour has changed that position

26:25

one iota in fact I hate them even more

26:27

than I did before we started so on that bombshell

26:29

I think we should take a break and we will return

26:32

after the break to find out what happened to unity

26:34

Mitford her relationship with Hitler and Tom

26:36

you will be able to solve I hope one of history's

26:39

most intriguing mysteries we love

26:41

a mystery on the rest of history don't we? Did

26:43

unity Mitford have Hitler's child?

26:47

Hey I'm Ryan Reynolds at Mint Mobile we

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27:21

one has the sense that

27:23

unity was in a preferable position to

27:26

a mistress more protected because not

27:28

dependent upon that mutable physical

27:30

tie she could sit and babble

27:32

away as a mistress would never have dared her

27:35

intimacy with Hitler was odder than that

27:37

she was light relief a combination of younger

27:39

sister court jester and talisman he

27:42

may also have enjoyed the fact that his henchmen

27:44

did not really want her there but could not say so

27:47

he was impressed by Britain fascinated

27:49

by its ability to command an empire and

27:51

like so many people he was compelled by

27:53

the British aristocracy in his way

27:56

he was probably impressed by unity herself

27:58

quite simply Hitler felt happier

28:01

with her around. So that time is Laura

28:03

Thompson, who takes six girls, the lives

28:06

of the Mitford sisters. So this

28:08

is the real core of the story, isn't it? Unity

28:10

Mitford's relationship with Adolf Hitler. And

28:12

it's the extraordinary thing is that this

28:15

posh airhead, who you might

28:17

think has nothing to offer at all,

28:20

becomes part of Hitler's inner circle.

28:22

Yeah, so Laura Thompson's book is brilliant. It's about

28:24

all, as the title implies, it's about all the Mitford

28:27

sisters. And she is much more generous to

28:29

Unity than David Price Jones' in

28:31

his biography. Both of them are

28:34

agreed that almost certainly

28:36

there wasn't a sexual relationship between

28:38

Hitler. Oh, no. And therefore the entire

28:41

premise of this episode has been destroyed. No,

28:43

we'll come to the story that

28:46

maybe Unity was carrying Hitler's

28:48

love child later in the episode. But for now, let's act on

28:50

the assumption that there's a platonic

28:53

quality to Unity's relationship

28:55

with Hitler. If that's the case, then what is going

28:57

on? I think Laura Thompson absolutely

28:59

fixes on it, which is that Hitler is charmed.

29:02

So Laura Thompson talks about all the Mitford sisters

29:04

having this yearning towards lightness, which

29:07

I think is a kind of wonderful phrase. Even

29:09

when you're going into the dark, they speak

29:11

the language of the nursery. They talk

29:13

to people with utmost confidence

29:16

that everyone is going to be interested in what they have to say.

29:19

And so that means that Unity perhaps is

29:21

relaxed with Hitler in a way that

29:24

very few people are. Because

29:26

most people are either terrified of him or

29:29

desperate for something. But Unity

29:31

has already got what she wants. She wants to hang out with him.

29:33

And so now she can just kind of prattle away using

29:36

her kind of nursery language, dear

29:39

sweet Hitler. That's what she calls it. The blissful

29:41

Fuhrer. Yes. Oh, God, my sweet. Am I right

29:43

in thinking to him? I read in your notes. She encourages

29:45

Hitler to do impressions. She does, yes.

29:48

So she gets him to tell jokes and

29:51

she gets him to do impressions, particularly of Mussolini, which

29:53

apparently she finds so funny. So

29:55

it's evident that Hitler is able to kind of relax

29:57

with her and to... to

30:00

be a tremendous laugh, all his impressions, all

30:02

his gags flowing out in a way that normally, you

30:04

know, one doesn't associate with the dear, dear Fuhrer.

30:07

So definitely unity amuses him,

30:10

but I think there is also a sense he feels that

30:13

she has been sent by fate because

30:15

of the fact that her middle name is Valkyrie, because

30:18

she was born in Swastika, because

30:21

her forebears are such significant

30:23

figures in the history of antisemitism. He

30:25

feels, you know, what are the odds that this girl would

30:28

come from Britain with all

30:30

these markers? And he's quite

30:32

superstitious, you know, he's the man of destiny.

30:34

I think that there's a slight element of that

30:36

as well. And so he gives her considerable

30:39

marks of favor. So he gives her a gold Swastika

30:41

badge with his signature engraved on the back, that

30:43

giving to very, very few people. He

30:46

invites both unity and Diana. So unity

30:48

introduces Diana to him. And you can imagine

30:50

what a thrill that must have given the younger

30:52

sister to introduce the glamorous elder sister

30:55

to the Fuhrer. They get given splendid

30:57

seats at the Olympic Games. Hitler

31:00

rather naughtily sits next

31:02

to Eva Braun, who is incredibly

31:04

jealous. And in fact, stages a

31:06

suicide attempt to try and get attention. And

31:09

Hitler probably does pay attention to Eva Braun. And

31:11

so that, again, kind of alerts

31:13

unity to the fact that melodrama and histrionics,

31:17

this is how you keep Hitler interested.

31:20

I think unity is also playing a kind

31:23

of political role in a very gauche

31:26

clumsy way, because she is unbelievably

31:29

indiscreet. So anything she's told, she will blab.

31:32

So Hitler knows this. So he can use

31:34

her basically to communicate with upper

31:36

class circles in Britain. So there's an occasion

31:38

where he lets slip that he's crossed with Mussolini.

31:42

Unity immediately reports that to all her contacts

31:44

back in London and before you know it, Foreign

31:47

Office and number 10, buzzing with

31:49

possibilities for, you know, peeling Hitler

31:51

off Mussolini. And likewise, she's

31:54

very indiscreet about what she's heard in London. So

31:56

she tells Hitler that according to Randolph Churchill,

31:58

London has no air defenses. I mean,

32:00

and this is verging on the treasonous.

32:03

I don't think she thinks of it in those terms, but she is blabbing

32:06

away. And I think what unity,

32:09

what she is very patriotic. She's

32:12

very proud to be British, but she also

32:14

loves Germany. She loves her darling Fuhrer.

32:17

And I think she wants Britain and Germany

32:19

to be in an alliance. And it may

32:21

be that at the margins of her thoughts, she's

32:24

thinking that she perhaps could play a role

32:26

if perhaps the darling Fuhrer would marry her. You

32:28

know, a kind of domestic alliance. So

32:30

as a schoolgirl, she had told a friend

32:33

of hers, her ambition, when she grew up was

32:35

to become the power behind a mighty throne. So

32:38

perhaps there's an element of that. I mean, just to put

32:40

that into context, before the First World

32:42

War, the British elite had been

32:44

very, very pro-German. People had loved

32:47

traveling to Germany on holiday. When we did that

32:49

podcast about holidays, people got those terrible

32:51

spas. All of that kind of thing. People

32:53

loved German literature. They loved German philosophy. You know, intelligent

32:56

thinking people. And between the wars,

32:58

there are lots of people, it's rather like Lord Darlington

33:01

and Kazuo Shigeru's novel, The Remains of the Day. People

33:03

who think, gosh, the First World War was such a trinity,

33:06

a friendship between Britain and Germany.

33:08

You know, they're so like us. They're so highbrow,

33:11

the Germans, tremendous culture, all

33:13

that sort of stuff. So actually Unity, she's

33:15

a very outlandish version of this.

33:18

Yeah. But there'd be lots of aristocrats

33:20

back in Britain and intelligent, well-educated

33:23

people who would say, yes, Britain and Germany

33:25

should be friends and actually should be the two great

33:27

pillars of the world order and all this kind

33:29

of stuff. And the Mitfords are all fascinated

33:33

by Germany with the exception of Nancy, who's

33:35

a tremendous Francophile. And her

33:37

fascination with Paris, you know, she goes to live in Paris.

33:39

She has a famous romance with

33:42

a colonel in the Free French. And

33:44

she is making a statement there that she is not

33:47

part of this obsession with Germany that has shaded

33:49

into overt sympathy with fascism

33:51

and Nazism because Diana

33:53

is not the only member of her family who Unity

33:55

introduces to Hitler. So she gets her parents

33:58

over.

33:59

Laude Reedsdale, aka Uncle Matthew, famous

34:02

for thinking once a hun, always a hun, he's

34:05

immediately charmed by Hitler. So also

34:07

is Lady Reedsdale, who

34:10

the first time she meets Hitler despite not speaking

34:12

German, she lectures him on the best way to

34:14

make bread. Laude

34:16

Reedsdale is completely won over by Hitler and he

34:19

goes to the House of Lords and defends the

34:21

Anschluss. Lady Reedsdale

34:23

goes even further, goes back, starts writing

34:25

articles overtly in favor of Hitler,

34:28

becomes very hostile to Churchill, calls

34:30

him that wicked man, becomes devoted to the

34:32

protocols of the elders of Zion, that very

34:35

sinister text,

34:38

all the darkest anti-Semitic tropes and

34:40

kind of rights, too true. And I always said

34:42

so in the margin. So Lady Reedsdale

34:44

is going full in. Meanwhile, of course,

34:46

there's Diana. Hitler is

34:49

very taken with Diana as well, very handsome,

34:52

and describes Diana in unity as perfect

34:54

examples of Aryan womanhood.

34:56

And Diana, in turn, is able

34:59

to smooth the way for Moseley. So they go

35:01

over to Germany and they actually get married

35:03

in Goebbels drawing

35:05

room, even though Goebbels doesn't like them. Hitler

35:09

insists on it and Hitler is at the wedding.

35:11

Unity, interestingly, isn't because it's

35:13

still the wedding has to be kept secret at this point. And

35:15

they know that if unity is there, she'll blab. She'll

35:18

tell everybody. But of course, Hitler and Moseley didn't

35:20

think much of each other, did they? No. I mean, in

35:22

a previous episode about whether Moseley would have been the British

35:24

Fuhrer, I don't know if the Nazis had raided Britain

35:26

or something, and actually Hitler and Moseley held each

35:29

other in quite low regard. But I think there's a sense of

35:31

alpha males kind of squaring up.

35:35

And so again, this is part

35:37

of the social dynamic of

35:39

what's going on. I mean, it's like a kind of very

35:42

dark social comedy. So Pamela,

35:44

the second Mitford sister, she meets Hitler,

35:46

describes him as being like an old farmer in a brown

35:48

suit. And she goes on to marry a fascist

35:51

sympathizer, who nevertheless serves

35:53

very bravely in the war. Tom, the

35:56

only son, he meets Hitler and

36:00

these with Germany and by extension Nazism

36:02

are such that he insists on serving

36:05

against the Japanese where he dies in the

36:07

war in Burma. Deborah who

36:09

is very very apolitical but she

36:11

goes and meets him. In fact the only the only members

36:13

of the family who don't meet Hitler are Nancy

36:16

and Jessica the Communist. Right and Haile

36:19

Hammersley who was a family friend to the Mitford said she

36:21

wrote to Nancy and said you Mitfords you do like

36:23

dictators. Yeah obviously

36:26

very true but obviously for aristocratic

36:28

people like the Mitfords to go back to your thing about class

36:31

as well Tom they would regard democracy

36:34

and sort of non-violence and stuff they'd

36:36

regard them as awful vulgar suburban

36:38

middle-class values wouldn't they? No I

36:40

don't think so not necessarily I mean Deborah Debo

36:43

who goes on to marry the man who in

36:45

due course becomes the Duke of Devonshire I mean

36:47

she's a kind of classic conservative. Yeah

36:49

but she has the others. But Diana they

36:52

would think of them as middle class and bourgeois and and

36:55

they would think of cases as fun wouldn't

36:57

they? They love dressing up isn't that wonderful? Yes

36:59

I think that's true and I think that that hence

37:02

the phrase frivolity of evil but I think if

37:04

you are tempted by that to think

37:06

there isn't really any harm being done there

37:08

are dimensions to Unity's behavior

37:10

that I think are completely shocking. So this

37:13

terrible story is told that she comes back from Germany

37:15

and she she tells her her siblings

37:17

how in Germany she'd met an old woman

37:20

who was very obviously Jewish loaded down

37:22

with lots of bags and the woman

37:24

asks Unity the way to the railway station and

37:27

Unity I told her the wrong way because I saw

37:29

how heavy the bundle was wasn't that wonderful of

37:31

me? No what a monster.

37:34

And here is a former friend

37:36

of Unity's who'd been at art college with her once

37:39

she boasted that it was such fun to have

37:41

supper with Stryker as he'd have the Jews in

37:43

after the meal they'd be brought up from the cellar and be made to

37:45

eat grass then entertain the guests.

37:48

Oh Tom this is very bad form I mean this

37:50

is there's no... No there's nothing funny

37:52

about that at all and so she becomes increasingly

37:55

notorious in England so there's a

37:57

famous ditty is published in one of the papers about

37:59

it you can't criticize unity with impunity.

38:02

If you try to belittle her, you have to answer to

38:04

Hitler. She gets caught up in a riot

38:06

in Hyde Park where I think Attlee

38:08

was speaking and she's kind of goose

38:10

stepping around in her black uniform, has

38:12

to be bundled into a cab. She, like her mother,

38:15

is busy writing articles in favor of Hitler

38:17

in the British press and she stays

38:20

committed to Hitler even as it becomes

38:22

increasingly evident that Britain

38:24

is going to be going to war with Germany. So 1939,

38:28

she goes to Brereut, the festival

38:30

there with Diana and Hitler

38:32

basically says to them, look, you

38:35

should get out of Germany because we are going to be going

38:37

to war and Diana duly

38:39

goes back home. But unity stays

38:41

there. And maybe one of the reasons why unity stays

38:43

there and a very physical evidence,

38:46

both of Hitler's favor and of her desire

38:48

to become German is that Hitler

38:51

has given her a flat. So he had given

38:53

her a choice of four flats in Munich.

38:56

She'd gone round, she'd chosen the one that she wanted, went

38:58

round the house saying, oh, these curtains won't do at all. We

39:00

must get rid of this awful sofa. Meanwhile,

39:03

the two people who are being dispossessed,

39:06

both of whom are Jewish, are sitting

39:08

in the hallway sobbing. She

39:11

pays them no attention at all. So

39:13

this is the background to the most

39:16

famous incident in

39:18

her life, which is when war is declared.

39:20

Britain declares war on Germany. She goes,

39:23

she's in Munich, she's in her flat that where

39:25

she's living that's been taken from the Jewish couple. She

39:28

goes to the English garden in Munich. She

39:30

has a very small caliber kind

39:33

of pearl handle pistol. She

39:35

shoots herself through the head. But the

39:37

bullet is isn't sufficiently, you know,

39:39

it's a small caliber bullet. So it doesn't

39:42

kill her. She's found, she's

39:44

bundled into an ambulance taken to the pistol. She's

39:46

recognized Hitler sends her flowers,

39:49

Goebbels, Ribbentrop, they all send her flowers.

39:51

And on the 10th of September, even

39:53

as the war with Britain is in

39:56

its opening weeks, Hitler finds time to come and visit

39:58

her. She doesn't recognize it. him because

40:01

she's mentally shot. And as

40:03

she comes to, she tries to commit

40:05

suicide a second time by swallowing her swastika

40:07

badge, but that doesn't work. And it's only

40:09

after six weeks that she recaptures her

40:11

ability to speak. And on the 8th

40:14

of November, Hitler comes again. It's the last time they

40:16

meet and Hitler says, you know, what do you want?

40:18

Do you want to stay here? Or do you want to be sent

40:20

back to England? And she says, I would like

40:22

to go back to England. And so he arranges

40:24

for her to be taken to Bern in neutral

40:27

Switzerland. And the phony war is

40:29

still on. So it's perfectly possible for her

40:31

to be taken by rail from Switzerland

40:33

all the way back to England. So her

40:35

mother and her younger

40:38

sister go and get her. I mean, it must have been

40:40

hideous for her that, you know, being jolted along

40:42

the bullet in her head. When she arrives

40:44

in Folkstone, there's a kind of tremendous scandal

40:47

because there seem to be armed

40:49

guards everywhere. And this

40:51

will become the subject of much public criticism.

40:54

And it's uncertain whether the

40:56

armed guards are there to stop

40:58

people from looking at her. Yeah. Or

41:00

whether they're just coincidental. But there is this feeling

41:03

that she is getting special treatment

41:05

that would not be afforded to other people

41:08

to protect her from the crowds and

41:10

the press, presumably. Yes. And

41:12

so in the comments, Herbert Morrison, who will, of

41:14

course, go on to become home secretary

41:16

in the coalition government,

41:18

he describes her as a British subject who had been

41:20

openly assisting the cause of an enemy government

41:23

and asks, would a working class

41:25

person receive similar treatment? Well,

41:27

he's right. Yeah, he is absolutely right. Think

41:30

about the cases of British citizens,

41:32

British subject, Shami Mabagam, who have been,

41:35

you know, working with the Islamic State or whatever.

41:37

I think you see, Mitford should have been clocked

41:39

into the channel from a great hype. Well, a lot

41:41

of people do, but she isn't,

41:44

she goes to the Radcliffe in Oxford. There they

41:46

say there's no chance of extracting the bullet from her

41:48

brain. And so she is left essentially,

41:51

said the mental age of a 10 year old, a bright 10 year

41:54

old. She's left permanently incontinent. She's

41:56

kind of described by people as a kind

41:58

of large dog. She's

42:01

kind of a limbs going everywhere. She's like a kind of, you

42:03

know, a big, an enormous puppy. Tom,

42:05

just on the suicide attempt. The suicide attempt

42:08

is the day that Britain declares war on Germany.

42:10

Is that right? The third of September.

42:12

And this is because it's not just that her two

42:14

beloved countries are going to war with each other, but

42:16

is it also that she has been proved so

42:18

comprehensively

42:20

wrong

42:21

that all her silly, who knows, daydreaming

42:24

fantasies are, oh, we just don't know. We

42:26

just have no, is there any sense of guilt before she does

42:28

it? I mean, she never says, she never really talks

42:30

about it. Does she remember it? Nobody

42:33

knows. And I don't

42:36

know. I'm guessing it's the tension, you

42:39

know, all her dreams were vested in this dream

42:41

of this alliance between Britain and Germany. But

42:43

anyway, basically, to cut a long story

42:45

short, she never really

42:47

recovers. And in due course, she

42:50

she gets meningitis and dies at

42:52

the age of 33. So I think in 1948, so

42:55

after the war, she's never in prison. So unlike

42:57

her sister Diana, who gets locked up in Holloway,

42:59

she's never imprisoned on her parents. Her

43:02

parents, they split up in the war, didn't

43:04

they? They do, because the moment that Britain declares war

43:06

in Germany, Lord Reesdale, who is an absolute

43:08

patriot, swings behind the British war

43:10

effort, goes back to thinking that the Huns are beastly.

43:13

Lady Reesdale doesn't. Lady Reesdale remains

43:15

an enthusiast for Hitler. Yeah. And, you

43:17

know, succession of tragedies, everyone. So they split

43:20

up. Jessica, the communist sister

43:22

has gone to America. She doesn't come back. She

43:24

kind of absolute sense of rupture

43:27

between her and her parents. Tom dies

43:29

in Burma. And then you have the death of unity

43:32

in 1948 of meningitis. And the

43:34

question, Tom, which Theo,

43:36

a producer, desperately wants you to answer,

43:38

is whether she was carrying Hitler's child when she returned

43:41

to Britain. Right. So this is a theory that was prompted

43:43

by the release of declassified documents

43:45

in 2002, which

43:49

quoted an MI5 officer called Guy

43:51

Liddell, who said, we had

43:53

no evidence to support the press allegations

43:55

that she was in a serious state of health. And it might well

43:57

be that she was brought in on a stretcher. in

44:00

order to avoid publicity and unpleasantness to her

44:02

family. So that led to

44:04

the theory that she'd never actually shot herself.

44:07

And if she'd never shot herself, why did Hitler let

44:09

us go away? And so the

44:11

theory that then came that actually she was burying

44:14

his child, this is why how she came back.

44:16

And Martin Bright, who was the political

44:19

editor of the New Statesman at the time, he received

44:21

a phone call from a woman

44:23

who claimed that Unity Mitford

44:25

had gone to a private maternity hospital

44:28

in Oxford. And so putting

44:32

two and two together and coming up with eight, the

44:36

theory was that Unity Mitford had Hitler's love

44:38

child, that this child was then

44:40

taken away, brought for fostering, and therefore

44:43

Dominic, Hitler's dynasty,

44:45

maybe roaming the Cotswolds, even as you sit there.

44:48

I mean, frankly, if you met some people from the Cotswolds,

44:50

you wouldn't be entirely surprised. Well, there

44:52

you go. So I think it's unlikely. Let's put it like

44:54

that. It seems very unlikely to me. Well, I don't

44:56

think any Hitler biographer would give this theory

44:59

the slightest house room, would they? Or indeed, I think

45:01

many Mitford scholars either. And

45:04

the fact that there are Mitford scholars, the fact that they are

45:06

the subject of such enduring fascination,

45:08

I think is interesting because

45:11

I think there is a sense that

45:14

what both Unity and Diana did, as

45:17

I said, it's become part of the heritage industry. And I

45:19

think the reason for that is basically that Nancy

45:22

Mitford, when she wrote The Pursuit of Love and Love in

45:24

the Cold Climate, these are such brilliant

45:27

novels, such an affectionate

45:29

rendering of her

45:31

upbringing. And she takes

45:34

elements of her various sisters and folds

45:36

them into characters within the

45:38

narrative, that it's made

45:41

the fascist affiliations of both Diana

45:44

and Unity seem something eccentric,

45:47

something glamorous. I think there's

45:49

the glamour of evil. I think that's as

45:51

horrible as that sounds, especially when you hear the stories

45:54

of Unity's behavior. Yeah, so with Unity,

45:56

you have her early death. And

45:58

with the lady, mostly you have the fact

45:59

that she remained stunningly beautiful right

46:02

the way up to the end. So Nora Thompson in her

46:04

wonderful book describes her in her

46:06

final years, a tall race, like

46:08

a long exquisite wisp of gray white

46:10

smoke, entirely beautiful at the age

46:13

of 90. Well,

46:14

she would be appearing on these chat shows, Tom, wouldn't

46:16

she? In the 1970s, 1980s. Well,

46:19

Dominique, I'll read you what she said on Des Silent Days

46:21

when Sue Lawley, the presenter, asked her about the

46:23

Holocaust and whether she believed in the six

46:25

million figure. And her reply,

46:27

I don't really, I'm afraid, believe that six million

46:29

people were killed. I think this is just

46:32

not conceivable. It's too many.

46:34

But whether it's six or whether it's one makes no

46:36

difference morally. It's completely wrong. I think it was a

46:38

dreadfully wicked thing.

46:39

So that's pretty mind blowing. I mean, sure,

46:42

she's acknowledging that Hitler did wicked things. But

46:45

she is engaging in Holocaust

46:47

denial on the

46:49

BBC's premiere radio interview show. Yeah,

46:52

in 1989. It's extraordinary. It's extraordinary. And

46:54

actually, I mean, neither Lady

46:56

Moseley nor Sir Oz would ever really seem to have been

46:58

crippled by guilt or had any sense of guilt or

47:01

regret or any of these things. And I think

47:03

with Diana, it's precisely

47:05

because she absolutely

47:07

holds to her devotion tells all Moseley and also

47:09

because they both have this sort of aristocratic, this

47:12

bump, just self confidence, don't they? They don't ever

47:14

think, you know, it would be again, it would be bourgeois

47:16

and suburban to say, Oh, I feel

47:19

sorry, I've made mistakes and all these kinds of things. They

47:21

have this kind of invincible assurance,

47:24

self assurance. I mean, we left Moseley just to

47:26

wrap up his story. We left Moseley in prison,

47:28

didn't we, in the Second World War,

47:31

he was released on medical grounds in November 1943. And

47:33

actually, the rest of his

47:35

story, his life is kind of an irrelevance,

47:38

really, he's released, he's kind of

47:40

a toxic figure, he sets up

47:42

something called the Union Movement, arguing

47:44

bizarrely, as it may sound, for

47:47

European unity. But it's a sort of, you

47:49

know, Christian unity against

47:51

Bolshevism and all this kind of thing. It's kind of the European

47:53

Union as a kind of disguised

47:56

fascist bulwark against communism. He

47:58

then moves into anti-immigration,

48:01

so that it's not so anti-Semitic but it's more

48:03

racist against people who've moved to Britain from

48:06

South Asia and the Caribbean, so that's in the late

48:09

1950s. He actually stands for election

48:11

again in North Kensington in 1959 and

48:15

receives 8% of the vote, so this is in an area

48:17

where there have been racist riots and

48:19

he still does very badly, yeah

48:22

Notting Hill, so he still does very badly

48:24

which is a sign of how toxic his reputation has

48:26

been. The British Union of Fascists obviously has broken

48:28

up. It goes into eventually

48:31

into other far-right movements,

48:33

you know the British National Party, the

48:35

National Front in the 1970s

48:38

1980s, but I mean ultimately these

48:41

are quite small organisations that are never

48:44

remotely likely to win a single parliamentary

48:46

seat. Meanwhile he's gone to Paris, yes

48:49

exactly, a bit like the Duke and Duchess

48:51

of Windsor. Yeah and actually his place neighbors.

48:54

The thing that we forget because in the certainly I remember

48:57

growing up, you know Oswald Mosley was this sort

48:59

of name. He was the symbol of far-right

49:01

racism but also he was a ludicrous

49:04

figure because he was such a failure, but

49:06

actually forget that in the 1920s and 1930s, yeah there

49:10

are a lot of people who thought he might one day be Prime Minister,

49:12

that he was a serious and imaginative political thinker

49:15

and then he made those series of stupid gambles

49:19

leaving the Labour Party, setting up the

49:21

new party, then the BUF that actually

49:23

led nowhere because criticism I think

49:25

in Britain had nowhere to, you know, it didn't have enough

49:27

space to expand into because the parliamentary

49:29

system was too resilient, crucially Britain won the First

49:32

World War, so actually it ends up being associated

49:34

with the eccentric people like the Mitfords

49:37

and never really wins over Middle England

49:39

I would say. What do you think Tom? Well having done four

49:41

episodes on it, saying that fundamentally it wasn't

49:43

very important is perhaps not the name which do end. I

49:45

think there's a difference between being important and being interesting.

49:47

Absolutely, well so hence unity.

49:50

Yeah, I mean she strikes me, you were

49:52

so keen to do, I thought you were going to present

49:54

a kind of revisionist account of the Mitfords, but

49:57

actually I held them in very very low regard

49:59

before we did this. actually helped them in lower regard

50:01

now than I did an hour ago, Tom. So

50:04

the people who run the Mitford Heritage Industry,

50:06

you know, they should not be ringing to thank

50:08

you. Although probably the nature of their

50:10

story is such that probably the people who listen

50:12

to this and think, oh, go over to that graveyard

50:15

and swim brook and check out their graves. Well,

50:17

as I say, I think it's all down to Nancy, who

50:19

I think was a great, great novelist

50:22

and writer. And I think that it's testimony to the

50:24

power of her fiction, that

50:27

she has cast such a kind of golden luster over

50:30

all the other more monstrous

50:32

systems. She was also an absolutely

50:34

towering snob. So not a friend of

50:37

the rest of history, in my mind

50:39

at least. Okay, Tom, thank you very much.

50:41

That was absolutely fascinating. Thank you to everybody

50:44

for listening. And we will be returning next

50:47

week on Monday with some absolutely

50:49

non-fascist themed material.

50:52

So we will see you then. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.