Aye... "Late one night in pre-war Munich, a young English woman, dressed all in black and accompanied by six SS officers in full uniform, climbed the dark stairs to her apartment. Once inside she lit two large church candles either side of her bed, their glow revealing enormous swastika banners at its head and silver framed portraits of Adolf Hitler on side tables. After sliding off her boots and gauntlet-style gloves, she stepped out of her long black skirt and blindfolded herself with a Nazi armband before lying down, spread-eagled, on the bed. One man bound her hands and feet to its four corners while another, in what was obviously a familiar ritual, wound up the gramophone and dropped the needle on to a record of Horst-Wessel-Lied, the Nazi anthem. [SIZE=1.2em]This was the cue for the other officers to remove their boots, belts and uniforms. Then, as the pounding marching song broke the silence, they took it in turns to enjoy the entirely willing object of their desire.[/SIZE] So passed another typical evening for Unity Mitford, according to a startling new biography of the aristocrat’s daughter who scandalised Thirties Britain by becoming a member of Adolf Hitler’s most intimate circle. After the war, a sympathetic spin on her relationship with the Fuhrer was attempted by the Mitfords, whose endearingly eccentric family life was depicted in the much-loved novels of her sister, Nancy. The family maintained that Unity’s adoration of Hitler was the foolish attachment of a rather silly young girl. But author David Litchfield refutes the notion that there was anything naive or romantic about it. Indeed, he maintains that these Nazi-themed orgies were devised by Unity and carried out with Hitler’s connivance on condition that she titillate him with the details afterwards. All this was part of a form of sadomasochistic worship of the Fuhrer which would eventually see him demand that she make the ultimate sacrifice and offer up to him her own life." http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2455171/Unity-Mitford-English-debutante-staged-Nazi-orgies-Hitler-lost-virginity-Oswald-Mosley.html Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2455171/Unity-Mitford-English-debutante-staged-Nazi-orgies-Hitler-lost-virginity-Oswald-Mosley.html#ixzz2hTO8up80 Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
From 2003 about the sister/sisters http://www.ww2f.com/topic/1832-diana-mosley-dies-in-paris/?hl=mitford
Because it's apparently one of those squiffy 'untold'/'never before revealed'/'Hidden'/'Secret'/'Gripping'/'Insert Adjective' ...History... books which apparently brings little new to the table but salacious and sensational dripping that the tabloids often seem to like running a bit of puff for? It's an industry, I can live with that, I even sometimes read 'em, but I don't have to take 'em too seriously. Funny how they're rarely written by people with a decent record of History books... military or otherwise. 'Screwy' indeed, but also fascinating if covered well. I quite enjoyed these: The Mitfords: Letters between Six Sisters The Mitford Girls: The Biography of an Extraordinary Family But the Mitfords do seem to attract either slight Hagiographers, or axe-grinders. Perhaps because of the sort of readership who might go looking for stuff on Nancy.
The Pursuit of Love: Britain's most scandalous family "I must admit, 'The Mitfords' would madden me if I didn't chance to be one," wrote Diana Mitford to her sister Deborah in 1985. "How ghastly [they] all sound, though of course in real life haha they are ideal." And so say all of us! The success of the new BBC adaptation of Nancy Mitford's novel The Pursuit of Love (which this week is now being made available to watch internationally on Amazon Prime), and the renewed interest it has sparked in the bonkers, scandalous family that created and inspired it, makes us ask: what is it about the Mitford sisters that keeps us reading – and watching? The Pursuit of Love, which was published in 1945, sold 200,000 copies in its first year and has rarely been out of print since, shows that there is a ready audience for its delightful blend of wit and absurdity. Its story of the love lives of members of the eccentric Radlett family is funny, satirical and full of deliciously strange people, like the hypochondriac suitor Davey who "twisted his tonsil, singing" and was "on a new diet: one meal white, one meal red." And the book leads to the family, because The Pursuit of Love comes from Nancy Mitford's early life: it's "about us when we were little". That is one reason why she found it so easy to write, and why she found subsequent novels so difficult. (The follow up, Love in a Cold Climate, is less a sequel than an equal, being set in the same time frame as The Pursuit of Love but following a different branch of the family tree.) Making up stories is difficult when your own family seems like the most fantastic work of fiction. Nancy's friend Evelyn Waugh, who came up with the title, said she had used up all her plots in one book – which of course is why it has such pace and zest. The Mitfords were about excess, and if Diana was in love with England's tinpot Hitler, Unity Mitford, whose desire to shock from a young age included bringing a rat to a Buckingham Palace garden party, went for the real thing. Her love for Adolf Hitler was complete and unyielding: she met him 140 times and carried a signed photo of him everywhere she went. (Mixed Up Mitford Girls Still Confusing Europe, read one newspaper headline in 1937.) But when Britain declared war on Germany in 1939, Unity could not withstand the psychic conflict it caused her. She shot herself in the head, and missed, lodging a bullet in her skull but surviving for another nine years. After her suicide attempt, Hitler appeared at her bedside, which for most people would be a nightmarish fever dream, but for her was tantamount to a declaration of love. She declined into what James Lees-Milne called "a gradually dissolving fantasy existence" before her death.
There was a tv adaptation of The pursuit of love on a couple of months back, all very tongue in cheek.
Wasn't Unity's middle name "Valkyrie" ? Surely she wasn't born with that name! Or do I have it wrong?
