It was love at first sight for Bryan Guinness when he met Diana Mitford during the debutante season of 1928, and he hoped Diana felt the same. But she destroyed his optimism when she told him, “a kiss means nothing. I do it without thinking as I’m used to kissing in my family.” She did, however, agree to marry him and their wedding became the society event of the year. [1]
Born on 17 June 1910, Diana Mitford was the third of the famous and notorious Mitford sisters. She was the most beautiful, James Lees-Milne said that “she was the nearest thing to Botticelli’s Venus” that he had ever seen. And she was scandalous.
The young Diana Mitford met Bryan Guinness, heir to the Guinness brewing fortune when she was 18 and they planned to marry. Her parents initially opposed the match because Bryan’s family was so incredibly wealthy, but they eventually gave in and the wedding took place before Diana was 20. The couple was active in the London social scene of the young and wealthy upper crust. (Evelyn Waugh, who was a close friend, dedicated his satire Vile Bodies to Mitford and her husband.) Then in 1932, aged 23, she met and fell madly in love with Oswald Mosley, left her husband and went to live with him. Mosley was married, but his wife conveniently died soon after. Diana and Oswald secretly married on 6 October 1936 in the drawing room of Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels. Adolf Hitler, Robert Gordon-Canning and Bill Allen were in attendance. The marriage was kept secret until the birth of their first child in 1938. In August 1939, Hitler told Diana over lunch that war was inevitable. As a result of her connection with Hitler and involvement in Mosley’s fascist party, Diana spent much of WWII in Holloway prison.
After the war, the Mosleys rebuilt their lives, in Ireland and London, and then outside Paris, entertaining and being entertained by pre-war friends and new ones, including the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.
Mosley’s death in 1980 devastated Diana and she mourned him for the rest of her life. She remained beautiful into extreme old age and, gradually, attained iconic status. Diana Mitford died on 11 August 2003, aged 93.
Like most of the Mitford girls, she was a writer. She produced her own two books of memoirs, A Life of Contrasts (1977) and Loved Ones (1985). She translated, edited, wrote book reviews and wrote a biography of the Duchess of Windsor. Her diaries and letters have been published providing a highly entertaining insight into her life.
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