Longer, and therefore more rewarding, are the three pen-portraits reprinted here, of Evelyn Waugh, of Diana’s second husband, Sir Oswald Mosley, and of Violet Hammersley, an old friend of her mother’s. The material on Waugh and Mosley has been reproduced and incorporated many times elsewhere, but ‘Mrs Ham’ is a real curiosity. An elderly woman of strong character and great charm, Violet Hammersley was the wife of a rich banker, most of whose fortune had been lost soon after his death, leaving Mrs Ham to struggle on in a rather more modest way of life than that to which she had been accustomed. Much given to shameless self-pity, her low, hollow laugh and prophecies of doom were turned by the Mitfords into endless entertainment, magicked into a source of delight as much to her as to themselves.

Even more eccentric was Diana’s first mother-in-law. In 1929 Diana at the age of 18 married Bryan Guinness and quickly became fascinated by Lady Evelyn Guinness, with whom she used to be taken to stay at Bailiffscourt, a hideous farmhouse on the Sussex coast. Lady Evelyn was blond and blue-eyed, very pretty with an unusually tiny voice, ‘not exactly soft … more like a miniature hard voice, scarcely audible’. Sometimes she would take her house-party for a picnic on the downs:

When we reached the chosen spot the drivers of the cars unpacked a huge tea, a frying pan, a pat of butter, and eggs. ‘Diana’s so clever, Mummy, she can cook,’ said Bryan, bursting with pride. ‘I’ve never heard of such a thing, it’s too clever,’ said Lady Evelyn in her whispery little voice.

In conversation Diana Mosley was spell-binding, with her wit and charm, her powerful intelligence and blazing instinct for the truth. Yet unlike her author-sisters she falls slightly flat on the page. While Nancy and Deborah are natural writers, and Jessica’s coarse energy fuels her work with a bumptious humour, Diana’s style is strangely muted, only sparking into life sporadically. Her perceptions are so extraordinarily acute, however, and her personal history so fascinating that the book has plenty to offer both to Mitford fans and to students of the period.

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