I found this a very interesting and entertaining book. Lady Mosley was obviously a cultivated and delightful woman to know. However, this was one of the most disturbing books that I have read. The most interesting part of the book of course, was her description of the meetings with Hitler and Goering. After all we know about the horrers that these two perpetrated she still refers to them in almost fawning terms. When she comments on Hitlers beautiful hands and hair, really this is too much for me. I do not have a problem with her prewar views but an intelligent and cultivated person as she was must surely have better judgement than this.

She and her husband Sir Oswald constantly bemoan the fate the fate of the dreadful lot of the British working man prior to 1939 yet they always had the money to either buy a new castle or a down market mansion.

I heard Sir Oswald speak in the 1950's and would agree that other than Churchill he was one of the most accomplished speaker that I have heard. However, Churchill was quite correct to intern both of the Mosleys as to gether with the Duke of Windsor the trio would have made an excellant Nazi governement in waiting.

In spite of this she did have some interesting observations. She was rightly annoyed when her loyalty was questioned by Herbert Morrison who bravely spent WW1 in an orchard. And her comment that Britain was willing to go to war in 1939 to save Poland yet happily traded it to Russia in 1945 at Yalta

To summarize, education and breeding do not judgement make. It is obvious that a peace settlement with Hitler in 1940 was an invitation to a slave society.

To give you an idea of how politically persuasive this book is, I loaned it to a gentleman who served as a ground mechanic for the RAF throughout the Battle of Britain, a long time admirer of Winston Churchill. After he had carefully read every page he said: "It's a good read. There's just one question I have, though: How could the British government have put a lady like that in prison during the war, and with her baby?" The man who said this was my father. And I replied: "Dad, the British government passed something called 18B at the outbreak of war. It gave them the power to put anyone in jail that opposed the war, even someone with as much integrity, class, and beauty as the extraordinary Diana Mosley." Read the book yourself, it is about the other side of World War 2, but it also speaks of how nationalism is obsolete and gives a very good argument for believing that Europeanism is the wave of the future.

Of the many new biographies that I have read recently, barring a few of Prince Charles, this is one of the most sycophantic and subjective. The views that Diana and Oswald Mosley spouted were deplorable then as any fascist/racist views now. The terror and horror fascism caused between 1933 and 1945 in Germany alone, Ms Dalley seems to feel was not realised by the Moseleys. They were not apparently aware of the sinister connotations of their beliefs! They were innocents, merely trying to find a better life for the British! While the Moseleys didn't institute such atrocities as Hitler did, Oswald did spread racial hatred, and caused persecution in England, although Jan Dalley seems to feel that this was a mere by-product, caused by a few unreasonable fanatics.

I could go on and on. My other gripe about this book was Ms Dalley's blanket 'condemnation' of the autobiographical writings of Nancy and Jessica Mitford. While exaggeration may have occured it was no more that would occur in any family autobiography. . .who can look at their family objectively????? Indeed, this exaggeration was true of their general characters, and the manner in which they were brought up, and the conventions of their time and class. At least they didn't preach hatred and bigotry.

I digress. The duty of a biographer, IMHO, is to provide an objective and informative view of the subject, so that the reader can make a decision for themselves.

Ms Dalley professes to offer reasons, not excuses, and seems to think that it is reasonable to defend the deplorable views of this possible intelligent, possibly beautiful, possibly wronged woman with the reasoning that D. Mosely didn't know about the full horror of fascism pre 1945, and hers was an innocent form, as I have said. I feel myself being incoherent in my indignation, so I shall cease. My objective view of this book is that I can only suspect that Ms Dalley is herself a 'drawing room fascist'.

The Mitford sisters were power-groupies of various stripes. Nancy liked historical tyrants (Louis XIV and Frederick the Great); Jessica liked Stalin; Unity and Diana liked Hitler; and Debo liked the Duke of Devonshire (she was a piker).

But at least Nancy and Jessica had some talent. Unity was a rabidly unstable anti-semite, who committed suicide in an extraordinarily florid way. Diana was a rabidly stable anti-semite. Period. So why should we care about this moon-faced woman in a succession of horridly unflattering hairstyles? The author hasn't a clue. She keeps telling us that Diana is gorgeous, but at least understands that it isn't obvious from the photos in the book. She keeps telling us that Diana was brilliant, but you sure couldn't tell from her behaviour. When she was twenty-three, she hooked up with Oswald Mosley, and he is far more interesting than Diana, mainly because he is almost rivetingly despicable. The behaviour of Diana and his sister-in-law toward him (and his behaviour towards them) beggars belief. That this ridiculous creature dominated Diana's life is all you need to say about her. It could be contained in a paragraph. The author appears mightily constrained by the fact that her subject is still alive. Without that fact, she might have had some pithy things to say; but still, Diana is an irrelevant footnote.

Though I had heard of the Mitford sisters, this was my first foray into a biography about one of them (to be followed by more!). They do have a way of sparking curiosity with their unconventionality and downright bizarreness!

I echo some of the other readers' concerns: Dalley does not address how the Mosleys' despicable views were reacted to later on in life, nor how the unveiling of the true evils of the Third Reich after the war affected them and their thinking (from the question's absence, it appears not to have affected them at all, which is even more ghoulish than ever having those extremist views in the first place). Perhaps if these abhorrent opinions would have been placed in context within a panorama of the public at large at the time, it would have presented a more understandable portrait of why these people believed such nonsensical and evil things.

While Dalley makes it clear that she was under considerable constraint because he subject is still alive (and while Diana Mosley 'cooperated,' she would not permit quoting of previously unpublished letters or diaries, hamstringing attempts at insight), the timid minimal pursuit of the farther-reaching implications of their bigotry and racism makes the book appear two-dimensional and sycophantic. Ms. Dalley should have posed the hard (and most interesting) questions, and shown the faces of the Mitford children's virulent views for what they are: hateful-and all the ensuing questions of how? why? etc. Instead, she is charmed by the cosmetic trappings and glittering society. These aspects of Diana are interesting as well, but the underlying theme of how she and the others evolved into people who willingly embraced evil (and apparently never disavowed it or apologized for it) remains effectively untapped here. One feels one has read through Diana's daybook-whom she had lunch with, the litany of residences, where she traveled-but without truly touching the heart of who this woman really is and what she is all about. It gives the sense of reporting rather than biography. Again, perhaps that was the result of the subject's stonewalling, who knows?

Despite these difficulties, I found the book to be well-written and immensely readable (I would have actually preferred more detail, especially toward the end where time is compressed and everyone's endings are tidied up much too summarily) and consider it, if you have an interest in the Mitfords, better read than unread.