Very unusual read, there was a lot of repetition so it really drug the story out. I think it could have been told in less time and probably would have kept my interest better. But, it was very interesting ( )

I picked this biography up last year, having read a couple of Nancy Mitford’s enjoyable and sharply written biographies of historical figures (Madame de Pompadour and The Sun King), but found I couldn’t get into it - perhaps because I didn’t know enough at that point about the rest of this extraordinary family. Then this year I read Nancy’s two most famous novels, the semi-autobiographical The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate, followed by Jessica (Decca) Mitford’s autobiography Hons and Rebels - each of which I throughly enjoyed. Drawn in, I finally turned back to Mary Lovell’s biography to find out more. Disappointingly, while I found it fascinating and packed with absorbing detail, I agree with a number of earlier reviewers that it seemed strangely biased against ‘red sheep’ and runaway communist and risk-taker Decca - who, after all, seems to have done a great deal of good in her life through her energy and commitment to civil rights causes and lift-the-lid-style ‘muck-raking’. At the same time it was relatively uncritical, indeed almost fawning, towards Unity and especially Diana, the two Hitler-loving sisters whose unrepentant behaviour is frequently rationalised and downplayed throughout. While I learned much more about ‘Muv’ than I had previously understood, there was little of note about Debo, even less about Pam, and not enough about Nancy, beyond a fairly one-note portrayal as a scathing, even bitchy wit who was unlucky in love. I would like to have understood ‘Farve’ in more depth, too. All in all a compelling but lopsided portrait of one of last century’s most famous families. ( )

A joint biography of the Mitford sisters and their family. Eminently readable, and it's almost incredible to think about how broad a swath this group of people cut across Europe and America through much of the twentieth century. ( )

best book I,ve read this year ( )

This is a biography of the Mitford family with the focus on their parents and the six daughters. The son Tom is included on the periphery. The sisters were news makers from the late 1920's to the 1990;s. The oldest, Nancy, was a prolific writer of novels based on her eccentric family. Jessica (Decca) fled to the USA and became a member of the Communist Party which led to conflicts with Committee on Un-American Activities of the US Senate and constant surveillance by the FBI. Diana married Sir Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Fascist Party in the UK which led to both of them spend over three years in jail during WW II. Debo became the Duchess of Devonshire. Unity became a close friend of Hitler and when war was declared in 1939, because of her disappointment, she tried to commit suicide.

The book is also a history of the social life of the UK during this period and many famous people move through the pages of this volume including such as Churchill, Chamberlain and John Kennedy. The antics of this family entertained the masses for almost a century.

Contains immense detail but extremely readable. ( )