The six

By Laura Thompson

Subjects: Women authors, Biography, Mitford, nancy, 1904-1973, Authors, biography, English Authors, nyt:culture=2016-10-09, Mitford family, New York Times bestseller, Great britain, biography, New York Times reviewed, Sisters, English Women authors

Description: Six glamorous women: Nancy, Pamela, Diana, Unity, Jessica, and Deborah. Born into privilege, the Mitford sisters were the "bright young things" of high society London in the 1920s and 1930s. Born into country-house privilege in the early years of the 20th century, they became prominent as "bright young things" in the high society of interwar London. But as the shadow of Fascism crept over Europe, the stark--and very public--differences in their outlooks would reflect the political extremes of a dangerous era. The eldest was a razor-sharp novelist of upper-class manners; the second was loved by British poet laureate John Betjeman; the third was a Fascist who married Oswald Mosley, founder of the British Union of Fascists; the fourth idolized Hitler and shot herself in the head when Britain declared war on Germany; the fifth was a member of the American Communist Party; the sixth became Duchess of Devonshire. The intertwined stories of their stylish and scandalous lives hold up a revelatory mirror to upper-class English life before and after World War II. --Adapted from dust jacket.