The Notorious Mitfords : A Talk From Tom's Biographer, William Cross, FSA Scot

 

“The Notorious Mitfords”  

Above: Unity, Tom, Deborah, Diana, Jessica, Nancy and Pam 

A Talk By William Cross, FSA Scot

Cwmbran, South Wales: 21 January 2026

The six famous Mitford sisters  led notorious lives in feats of scandal,  love, adultery, divorce and  following fascism as part of the 20th century's greatest  high jinx tales, and real  history and folklore.  No one  was allowed to ignore the Mitford clan. They are still talked about. The TV drama series called  “Outrageous” is  a word that sums them up perfectly.

 

The girls were Nancy (1904-1973), a writer, Pamela  (1907- 1994), ( Rural Miford ), Diana ( 1910-2003 ),  who deserted her first husband for the dangerous Oswald Mosley), Unity ( 1914-1948)  ( who pursued Adolf Hitler), Jessica (1917-1996),   (a Communist, a writer, & who became an American citizen), and Deborah, ( 1920-2014) , the youngest of the tribe who became Duchess of Devonshire & chatelaine of Chatsworth House in Derbyshire.  There was one boy in the  line up,  third born, Tom, ( 1909-1945). He was not a headline seeker like his sisters, but a barrister, soldier and talented concert pianist.  Yet, he is as controversial as his sisters with a mangle of  love tangles & affairs involving both sexes. A handsome devil with a passion for married women.

 

The Mitford parents were minor British aristocrats.   David Freeman-Mitford ,  the  2nd Baron Redesdale  ( known to his children as "Farve" ) and his wife  Sydney Bowles ( known to her children as “Muv”).  They married, for  love, in 1904, but it was a underlying  business deal. The  Great War affected David’s position as the family’s “spare” after his elder brother was killed in action and so he became the Redesdale heir on his father’s death in 1916.

 

One  Mitford ancestor was a Lord Chancellor of England, another a notable traveller in Japan, who was a well known landscape gardener designing several Royal Estates for King Edward VII.   The Bowles family were sailors, Sydney’s father  was an  MP and publisher of  magazine titles including“ Vanity Fair” and “ The Lady”  .

 

Childhood for the Mitfords was in London and after the Great War, they lived in a succession of properties mainly in the Coltswolds. The countryside offered  a safe but fragile upbringing, with many madcap rituals, overseen by Muv,  nannies and governesses.    Money was tight but despite this it was remembered mostly with affection, although Nancy and Jessica  published critical accounts of their childhood. Each thought Muv was unloving and harsh and Farve a bully. Tom  was indulged by his parents and often resented by his sisters as he always got whatever he wanted.

 

Farve was an upright figure, a farmer/squire &  Peer, eccentric,  a stickler for rules, one being that girls should not be educated at  any school, only at home.  Tom however the family heir was  sent to preparatory and public school.  Muv was a curiously hands on character, with rules on food, health, based on her own upbringing with a ban on pork and shellfish and bizarre beliefs  that the good body did not need any  medicines, the good body would eventually  heal itself,  Muv  was a watchful wife and kept Farve from straying into the arms of other women, but he flirted with several domestic staff. Later, he had  a mistress whom he lived with for many years,  separating from Muv in the 1940s.  He died at Otterburn,  a Mitford homestead in Northumberland in 1958. Muv survived until 1963, and died in Scotland. Farve, Muv and four of the sisters, Nancy, Pam, Unity and Diana  are all buried at St Mary’s Churchyard, Swinbrook, a Mitford heritage site.  A memorial to Tom is also to be found inside the Church.

 

Farve  admired Muv’s ability with housekeeping budgets,  seeing that all six girls were prepared for presentation  at Court as debutantes and experienced foreign travel. The idea being that this route would find them husbands. The girls had they own ideas and each of them were a trouble to their parents  all their adult years.  Tom  was   Farve’s pride and joy. And Tom  was also always there for his sisters, despite their  many antics at home and abroad  and choice of husbands and lovers and friends and politics.  When troubles hit hardest Farve bought a Scottish Island, Inch Kenneth,  near Mull, which became the family’s refuge. Tragedies hit the Mitfords hard. Tom was killed in 1945  fighting the Japanese. Unity was reduced to a child like creature after attempting suicide and this led to her early death in 1948. The other girls lived to old age.

 

Will Cross  has made a close study of the Mitford clan  for a biography entitled  “ TOM MITFORD : A FEARFUL OLD TWISTER” & written  articles for the Mitford Society Journal.  He  is a writer and lecturer based in Newport,  a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland.  Will’s  e-mail for enquiries on books/talks  williecross@aol.com

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