In 1933 she took her sister Unity to Germany soon both had met the new German leader, Adolf Hitler. After four years, she left him for the fascist leader, Oswald Mosley, and set herself up as Mosley's mistress - a course of action that horrified her family and scandalised society. She was eighteen when she married Bryan Guinness, of the brewing dynasty, by whom she had two sons. Born in 1910 Diana was the most beautiful and the cleverest of the six Mitford sisters. For some, she was a cult for many, anathema. There are some of hers I have not yet read – a biography of Snowdon, one on Margot Asquith, Chanel’s Riviera: Life, Love and the Struggle for Survival on the Cote d’Azur, 1930 – 1944, and her most recent book The Husband Hunters: Social Climbing in London and New York so I do have more to look forward to.Diana Mosley was one of the most fascinating and controversial figures of recent times. She packs in lots of facts in a way that is almost novelistic and you race through her books with great pleasure. If they were so unfortunate as to return to England unmarried, they were the ‘Returned Empties’ – poor things!Īnne de Courcy’s style is eminently readable. Those girls who went out to India in search of husbands (Jane Austen’s aunt was one of them) were known as the ‘fishing fleet’. The Fishing Fleet: Husband Hunting in the Raj was published in 2012 and is also to be highly recommended. There’s more fascinating social history in 1939: The Last Season, about life in England just before WWII changed things forever, while her Debs at War: 1939 – 1945 looks at the period of the war itself. She has also written an excellent biography of Diana Mitford, second wife of Oswald Mosley, and another of Edith, Marchioness of Londonderry. It was packed with juicy social detail of the era, and was a fabulous read. One of the girls married Oswald Mosley, and all were glamorous, rich and wilful. My introduction to her work was her 2000 book The Viceroy’s Daughters: The Lives of the Curzon Sisters about the lives of the three daughters of Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India, and his American wife Mary. She was born in 1927, so I fear we can’t expect too many more books from her.

I love social history and good biographies, and one of my favourite authors in this area is Anne de Courcy. ‘The Story of an African Farm’ – Olive Schreiner.‘The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie’ – Muriel Spark.‘The Leopard’ – Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa.‘The Doll’s House’ – Katherine Mansfield.‘The Count of Monte Cristo’ – Alexandre Dumas.‘Tess of the D’Urbervilles’ – Thomas Hardy.‘Seven Little Australians’ – Ethel Turner.

‘Little Red Riding Hood’ – The Brothers Grimm.

‘Gone with the Wind’ – Margaret Mitchell.

Diana Mosley by Anne de Courcy