The Truth About the Mitford Sisters

Summary

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Betwixt the Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society

Episode: The Truth About the Mitford Sisters
Host: Dr Kate Lister
Guest: Mimi Pond
Date: November 25, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the notorious lives of the Mitford sisters, six aristocratic women whose wildly divergent politics, eccentricities, and varied accomplishments captured and scandalized 20th-century Britain. Dr Kate Lister is joined by author and cartoonist Mimi Pond, who recently created a graphic biography of the sisters. Together, they unravel how figures from one family could become fascists, communists, debutantes, duchesses, and literary forces—and why the fascination endures.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Who Were the Mitford Sisters? (03:34–08:11)

• Six aristocratic sisters, born 1904–1920 to Baron David Mitford and Sidney Mitford, grew up in isolated, eccentric conditions in the Cotswolds.
• The girls were educated at home by governesses and had limited social interaction outside family and close relations (notably, as cousins of Winston Churchill).
• Each was driven to distinguish herself, setting up a dynamic of wit, competition, and escape plans due to little financial support or traditional prospects.

Notable quote (05:03–05:08):
"Holy shit balls, man. That. What a family." — Kate Lister

2. Instigators and Scandal-Makers: Profiles of Key Sisters

Unity and Diana Mitford: Fascist Groupies (02:27–05:02; 10:20–26:10)

• Unity Mitford:

  • Absorbed by the fascist movement, became obsessed with Hitler, meeting him over 100 times and publishing anti-Semitic propaganda.
  • Displayed unusual behaviors (e.g., sliding under the dinner table, eating only mashed potatoes).
  • Attempted suicide in Munich when Britain declared war on Germany, resulting in brain damage; later died from complications (28:24–28:56).

• Diana Mitford:

  • Left Guinness heir husband for Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists.
  • Married Mosley at the Goebbels home in Germany; remained an unrepentant fascist until her death.
  • Imprisoned in Britain during WWII for suspected treason, endured both squalor and privilege (brought in food from Harrods, won a fur coat in a lawsuit while jailed).

Notable quote (26:00–26:12): "We will let you get away with a lot if you're very pretty, but we do. We have to draw the line at hardcore Nazism, I think." — Kate Lister

Jessica Mitford: The Communist Rebel (08:11–36:46)

• The most celebrated in the U.S. for her exposes of the American funeral industry and relentless activism.
• Ran off as a teen with Esmond Romilly (Winston Churchill's nephew) to cover the Spanish Civil War; later involved in civil rights and union movements in America.
• Endured personal tragedy (loss of her child to measles, husband’s death in WWII), but built a life of meaningful activism and wit.

Notable quote (42:05–42:56): "Jessica's always going to be my favorite because she was so funny and so sharp and so witty and just would be so much fun. I'd be a bit afraid of Nancy because she hated Americans...her mother described her as being like a sparkling fish. Lore that is disguised under the feathers as a nasty hook." — Mimi Pond

Nancy Mitford: Literary Star (05:32–05:34, throughout)

• Oldest sister, novelist ("The Pursuit of Love," "Love in a Cold Climate"), famed for sharp wit, often mean-spiritedness.
• Opposed fascist sisters, instrumental in Diana’s wartime internment.

Deborah ("Debo") Mitford: Aristocratic Survival (37:47–41:28)

• Became Duchess of Devonshire after family tragedies involving the Kennedys.
• Known for wit, farm management, and rumors of a close relationship with JFK.

Pamela Mitford: The Quiet Eccentric (41:28–41:44)

• Soft-spoken, animal lover, farm expert; married Derek Jackson, described as a "vigorous bisexual" and literal rocket scientist.
• Preferred rural life, running farms (and misidennfying cows), and poultry.

3. Family Dynamics and Early Clues (09:16–09:49)

• Early signs of division and oddness:
  • Unity’s behaviors suggest possible neurodivergence.
  • Each sister developed a dramatic "exit strategy" from their restrictive home.
• The family expressed little unity, with siblings reporting one another in wartime.

4. England's Relationship with Fascism (13:13–14:15)

• Fascism, pre-WWII, enjoyed surprising popularity among the British elite, supported even by prominent newspapers.
• Mosley and Diana’s public embrace of fascism landed them as ‘the most hated couple in Britain’ during and after the war (22:59–23:01).

5. Jessica’s Radical Path and American Reinvention (27:05–36:46)

• Ran off to Spain, later immigrated to America.
• Immersed in activism for civil rights, labor rights, and exposed systemic exploitation through journalism and advocacy.

6. "Bright Young Things" and Cultural Influence (09:16–09:40, 37:58–41:28)

• The sisters moved in elite social circles, influencing and intersecting with historical figures (Winston Churchill, the Kennedys, JFK).

7. Notoriety, Betrayal, and Aftermath (20:34–24:08)

• Nancy denounces Diana to authorities; the betrayal only discovered after Nancy’s death.
• Public outrage over Mosleys’ early release post-war; Diana showed no remorse for her politics.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Mitford Sisters’ Upbringing:
  “The library was like our church, you know, religiously. Every two weeks we went to the library.” – Mimi Pond (03:39)

• Describing the Family:
  “They were just very odd. I mean, the parents were very eccentric in our own classic English, upper class eccentric way... It was a really odd combination of, you know, very upper class and very kind of just oddball behavior." – Mimi Pond (07:02–07:56)

• On Unity’s Fascination with Hitler:
  "She went to Munich to go to, you know, finishing school. That was her excuse. But she really went to Munich to stalk Hitler, which she did successfully." – Mimi Pond (10:20)

• On Diana’s Marriage to Oswald Mosley:
  "They get married at Magda and Joseph Goebbels house, You know, Basically just pretty much to please Hitler." – Mimi Pond (18:36)

• On Jessica’s American Adventure:
  "They ran a bar in an Italian restaurant for a while...Then went to work doing clerical work for the government in D.C. and rose in the ranks of the typing pool and became involved in the office of OPA." – Mimi Pond (34:46–35:44)

• On Pamela Mitford:
  “Pam married Derek Jackson, who I like to refer to as a vigorous bisexual...he was also a fricking rocket scientist.” – Mimi Pond (39:39–39:54)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Introduction & Setup: 00:32–03:34
• Who Were the Mitford Sisters? 03:34–08:11
• Family Oddities and Early Signs: 09:16–10:20
• Unity and Diana’s Nazi Ties: 10:20–26:10
• British Fascism in Context: 13:13–14:15
• Wartime Arrests and Betrayal: 20:34–24:08
• Unity’s Suicide Attempt and Aftermath: 26:12–28:56
• Jessica’s Runaway and Activism: 27:05–36:46
• Deborah and Pamela’s Arcs: 37:47–41:28
• Final Reflections, Favorite Sister: 42:05–43:29

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Conclusion

Mimi Pond and Kate Lister paint a portrait of the Mitford sisters as dazzling, appalling, and always compelling: six siblings whose individual lives reflected and influenced the wild shifts of 20th-century politics and culture, united only by wit, determination, and notoriety.

Find more about Mimi Pond at: mimipond.com or on Instagram, “Mitfords in a Minute” series.

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Transcript

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[Kate Lister]

Hello, my lovely betwixters. It's me, Cait Lister. You are listening to Betwixt the Sheets. If this isn't the podcast that you wanted to listen to, you can get out now. Be off with you. Don't be hanging around slowing the rest of us down. And if you did want to stay, I do have to tell you this is an adult podcast, spoken by adults, other adults, about adult things in an adulty way, covering a range of subjects. And you should be an adult, too. Shall we proceed together?

[Mimi Pond]

Let's do it.

[Kate Lister]

It's September 1939, and British socialite Unity Mitford just found out that her beloved homeland has declared war on Germany. It's fair to say that this poses something of a moral quandary for Unity, who has gone all in for the fascist movement that swept Europe and the UK and is an obsessed follower, almost groupy, of none other than Adolf freaking Hitler. Yikes. It's said that she actually went to Germany and she met Adolf over a hundred times, which all became particularly awkward in the Mitford family. Given that her sister Jessica was a devoted communist, the six Mitford sisters are the stuff of legend. It wasn't just Unity that was signing up to the fascist cause in that family. Other sisters went on to be world famous novelists. One of them became the Duchess of Devonshire. You couldn't accuse anyone of indoctrinating someone in that family. And how did all of this unfold, you might be wondering. Well, dramatically, to say the least. Should we find out more? I think so.

[Mimi Pond]

SA.

[Kate Lister]

Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society with me, Kate Lister. Groupies are an interesting social and historical phenomenon, aren't they? And we usually associate them with rock groups. Well, weirdly, fascist dictators have groupies as well. And I think it's fair to say that Unity and Diana Mitford were fascist groupies. And that was just two of the Mitford sisters. Wait till you hear about the rest of them. Joining me today to help me get to know their story a little bit better is the fabulous cartoon and author, Mimi Pond, who has created an amazing graphic biography about all of them. So, without further ado, let's crack on. Hello, and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Mimi Pond. How are you doing?

[Mimi Pond]

Well, I'm just so excited to be here. I'm such an enormous fan and I.

[Kate Lister]

Am a huge fan of your work, Mimi. This book is absolutely incredible. It's beautiful graphic biography of the Mitford sisters.

[Mimi Pond]

Oh, well, thanks.

[Kate Lister]

The Mitford sisters. Mimi, why are you so fascinated with them? Where did this come from?

[Mimi Pond]

Well, my parents first stumbled across Jessica Mitford's American Way of Death at their local library in 1963 when it came out. And then they just couldn't get enough of it. They just never stopped talking about it. And it was, you know, hilarious and wonderful. And my parents of working class autodidacts. The library was like our church, you know, religiously. Every two weeks we went to the library. And they loved the idea that she'd uncovered this mainstream graft on the part of the funeral industry. They were nothing if not like. That's how they get you. And they joined a funeral society. And as a result, my mother saved 90% on the cost of her own cremation, which would have thrilled her to no end. So I only knew about Jessica until I was an adult, and I was at some party in New York and I was blabbing about her, and someone turned to me and said, you know, she had sisters. I was like, what? Then I started to read everything I. All the books that were coming out by them and about them, their letters to each other, their letters to other people. There was this river of books that came out in the. I want to say, the late 90s, early 2000s, kind of capitalizing on it. But everything that's been written has been sort of very polite for the most part.

[Kate Lister]

Well, there's a lot to be polite about. They were aristocrats from Welsh. I suppose you can be polite, but, my God, there's a lot to be impolite about, isn't it?

[Mimi Pond]

Yeah.

[Kate Lister]

Holy shit balls, man. That. What a family.

[Mimi Pond]

Yeah. I feel like in these books, Jessica gets a short shrift. You know, she's the one who left, who kind of turned her back on the aristocracy and that whole way of life and became essentially very much an American.

[Kate Lister]

Can we paint a bit of a picture? Because there might be people listening who they're not quite sure who we're talking about here. Who were the Mitford sisters?

[Mimi Pond]

All right. The Mitford sisters were six aristocratic sisters born between 1904 and 1920 to a minor aristocrat, the Baron Reidsdale, David Mitford and his wife, Sidney Mitford. They were raised in isolation in the Cotswolds in Swinbrooke. Their father was the second son of the first Baron Reidsdale, who was the ambassador to Japan. And when his older brother was killed in World War I, he inherited the estate and inherited this massive Victorian pile that his father had built, Batsford House, and, you know, thousands and thousands of acres and other properties. And he was in no way prepared to be, you know, the. The one inheriting a lot of stuff. And he had a terrible business sense, like, monumentally bad business sense. And he. He couldn't afford to keep this immense estate, so he sold it. They moved to Astle Manor in Swinbrooke. He didn't believe in educating girls, so his six daughters were all educated at home by a series of governesses. And Nancy was the oldest. And Nancy became the famous comic novelist who wrote Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate, among other great works. And she was just extremely funny and she set the bar really high. So they were in this hot house environment where they all had to be clever and funny and smart. They had their grandfather's library to fall back on, which was impressive. And they were cousins of Winston Churchill. David Mitford was Clementine Churchill's cousin, first cousin. And so they spent a lot of time with the Churchills and other family members, but they didn't really even socialize that much. So it very much was this hothouse environment where Nancy was calling the shots. And she was kind of mean and, you know, you had to, like, be quick enough to keep up with Nancy. And they were just very odd. They were. I mean, the parents were very eccentric in our own classic English, upper class eccentric way. And their mother was always pinching pennies, even though they had a staff of seven and this beautiful home. She had to do things like economize, like she decided they would do away with the use of table napkins because it cost so much a week to launder and iron them. And so they all learned to just be extremely careful sitting at the dinner table. And she also was raising chickens to sell the eggs in the poultry at markets. So it was a really odd combination of, you know, very upper class and very kind of just oddball behavior.

[Kate Lister]

And they had a son as well, and he went off to Eton. Right.

[Mimi Pond]

Tom went to Eton. Tom went to Oxford. Tom was going to study to become a lawyer. Tom was killed in World War II. You know. Meanwhile, the girls are at home trying to. And their father had made it clear there was no money for them. You know, forget about it. You know, you're on your own. So they're all planning their exit strategies early on. So, having become smitten with Diana's love interest after she left her husband, Brian Guinness, of the Guinness beer fortune, she'd scandalously left him after three years of marriage to be with Oswald Mosley, head of the British Union of Fashion and Teenage Unity, had a mad crush on Oswald Mosley and decided Hitler was the bee's knees and said, well, I'm going to meet Hitler. And Jessica, who was then about 12, said, well, I'm a communist, you know, just because they're competing with each other. And little Debo, who was about 10, said, well, I'm going to marry a duke. And all of these things happened. Wow.

[Kate Lister]

I suppose that's one of the things that they're most famous for, is being part of the bright young things set, which we'll talk about in a minute. But also for being so oppositional in their views from this one family. They've got. They've got communists and people that absolutely love Hitler. It's such a strange. Like, was there any sense of this in early childhood about how these women were going to become so different?

[Mimi Pond]

Well, I think if there were any indications at all, I think possibly unity was probably somewhere out there on the spectrum.

[Kate Lister]

Oh, that's interesting. Okay.

[Mimi Pond]

If she didn't like the way the conversation was going at the dinner table, she would just slowly slide under the table and of course, everyone would just ignore her.

[Kate Lister]

I love that. I might try that. Just. Just vanishing from view. That's brilliant.

[Mimi Pond]

And she only ate, like, mashed potatoes for years, you know, and they just kind of like, okay, whenever you get.

[Kate Lister]

People in history and people try and go back and diagnose them with some kind of neurodivergent condition, you're like, oh, you gotta be careful. I think that one's a safe bet, Mimi. That's. It's.

[Mimi Pond]

I think it. I think it really is. Yeah. And apparently she was very funny. And despite the fact that she was a rabid fascist who became almost literally Hitler's best friend, it was almost like they were each other's imaginary friends. I don't know if that makes sense, but she went to Munich to go to, you know, finishing school. That was her excuse. But she really went to Munich to stalk Hitler, which she did successfully. She went to the same cafe where she knew he went day in and day out for months and months until finally he showed up. And eventually he invited her over to his table and she drove his cabinet mad because she was so kind of outrageous. And he found her charming. He thought, oh, she's from an older English aristocratic family. He loved that. And he also loved the fact that her name was Unity Valkyrie Mitford and that she was actually conceived. This is true. She was conceived in a town in Canada called Swastika.

[Kate Lister]

Holy shit. Wow.

[Mimi Pond]

Her father had another one of his hair brained schemed, was prospecting for gold. So he had staked a claim in a town in Canada called Swastika.

[Kate Lister]

Is it still called Swastika?

[Mimi Pond]

I don't know.

[Kate Lister]

You'd change that, wouldn't you? You'd have a meeting and change that.

[Mimi Pond]

I think there might be a city council meeting. Surely, surely.

[Kate Lister]

So, so how old is this girl when she goes over to Germany? And even before that, how does she get radicalized in a family home where they're just being taught by governesses?

[Mimi Pond]

Because of Oswald Mosley.

[Kate Lister]

Yes. Yeah. Okay.

[Mimi Pond]

So she's just following behind, you know, puppy dog, following along behind Diana and Oswald Mosley, who's apparently very charismatic. And everyone else is horrified that Diana, who's had two children in rapid succession with Brian Guinness, has rebelled and suddenly left him to openly live as the mistress of the married Oswald Mosley.

[Kate Lister]

That's creepy.

[Mimi Pond]

He was a super creep. Yes.

[Kate Lister]

Yeah. I mean, even if it wasn't for the fascism, which is pretty bad. He was creepy.

[Mimi Pond]

Oh, he was a. Yeah. I mean, he was a completely notorious womanizer. He was sleeping with his wife's sisters. Two sisters and their stepmother. And their stepmother.

[Kate Lister]

No, no. What in the dark Jerry Springer nonsense is that?

[Mimi Pond]

And one of the superstitions their father clung to was that if you wrote your enemy's name on a piece of paper and put it in a drawer, doom was sure to befall them. So Oswald's name on a piece of paper went straight in that drawer.

[Kate Lister]

Wow.

[Mimi Pond]

It didn't work.

[Kate Lister]

Wow. How did she even meet Oswald Mosley?

[Mimi Pond]

At a party. You know, at a party.

[Kate Lister]

Okay.

[Mimi Pond]

He was a legitimate politician for. For a time and was a member of the Conservative Party. And then he jumped over and became a liberal and eventually started the British Union of Fascists because, you know, obviously the world needs more fascists. Right.

[Kate Lister]

You can see the progression at the time.

[Mimi Pond]

Fascism was not perceived the way it is today. Now we know it's bad. Then it was, you know, Mussolini had come up with this great idea and the trains were running on time and everyone thought, well, this is, this is a new way of looking at things. Whereas Communism, Communism, you know, the aristocrats, hell, had their, their panties in a twist because the communists had just murdered the cousins of the royal family in Russia.

[Kate Lister]

You know, we forget in this country just how pro fascist we were for a while there. I mean, not everybody.

[Mimi Pond]

Oh, yeah, Charles Lindbergh, big, you know, America first.

[Kate Lister]

Yeah, big fascist. I think the Daily Mail over here ran a support article about fascism in the lead up to World War II, saying how great it was and that we should all be doing that. It was, it was popular, alarmingly popular.

[Mimi Pond]

Yes. Yes, it was.

[Kate Lister]

And Oswald Mosley, he was the kind of the ringleader of this. He was the leader of the fascist party in Britain.

[Mimi Pond]

Oh, yeah.

[Kate Lister]

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[Mimi Pond]

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[Kate Lister]

So they meet at a party. He's already married and having sex with everybody, it seems.

[Mimi Pond]

Everybody.

[Kate Lister]

How does it go from they're both married to they both end up together?

[Mimi Pond]

Well, his wife, Oswald Mosley's wife, Simi, who was the daughter of the former Viceroy of India, Lord Curzon, she's not only the daughter of the Viceroy of India, but her mother, who had died, was an American heiress, I think a Marshall Field department store heiress. So, you know, he was opportunistic as well. So Simi, who campaigned with him and was devoted to him, developed, I think, appendicitis and developed peritonitis, and there was no antibiotics then. And she died. And, you know, of course the doctor said things like, she didn't want to live. You know, she. She'd lost the will to live because her husband was so terrible. We don't know this for sure. But anyway, she's dead and now he's kind of footloose and fancy free, and they didn't really care about getting married. But at the time, Diana, who was not stupid, had an idea. By that point, Oswald Mosley had been banned from British radio for his views. And Diana saw the opportunity of building a radio station on an island off the coast of Germany in the North Sea and broadcasting to Britain from there and campaigned Hitler to get a radio license from Germany to do so. And I met with him many, many times to try to talk him into it. And she finally talked him into it. They were going to have, like, no, supposedly no propaganda, just like light news, women's program. Yeah. And this is the closest, I think, they come to being Kardashian, like, is that she wanted to have a line of cosmetics that she would advertise on this radio station. And she wasn't getting anywhere with him. And she knew, you know, his views on marriage were very strong. You know, he believed in all that kind of home and hearth and family and, you know, the wife stays at home and has the children and does that. And so she decided she and Oswald Mosley should get married. And who offered up their home for her to get married in, but Magda Goebbels, Joseph Goebbels wife. So they get married at Magda and Joseph Goebbels house, You know, Basically just pretty much to please Hitler. And then they're still working, they're building that radio station and then 1939 comes along and oops, oops a daisy.

[Kate Lister]

Fuck. So she mates with Hitler as well then?

[Mimi Pond]

Oh, yeah, yeah. She took it upon herself to learn German. And in fact, Oswald Mosley did not speak German and the wedding vows were all in German and he picked a fight with her that day. He was in a really bad mood because a couple days earlier he had had his march through East London, you know, this famous riot called the Battle of Cable street that went really badly. He and his, his fascist troops marched through the largely Jewish East End and were met by somewhere between, I don't know, the numbers range between 20,000 and 200,000 protesters.

[Kate Lister]

Nice, nice.

[Mimi Pond]

So good. Yeah. He wasn't in the best of moods.

[Kate Lister]

Oh, did they go and get married in the Goebbels house? See, I suppose there was a tiny, tiny part of me that thought maybe, maybe Diana hasn't bought into the propaganda hook, line and sinker.

[Mimi Pond]

Maybe she's. Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no. By the end of Oswald's life, he's regretting having ever started the, the buf.

[Kate Lister]

Oh.

[Mimi Pond]

Diana remained a die hard fascist until the end of her life.

[Kate Lister]

Wow. Okay, okay, so what happens at the outbreak of war and they're running this light fascism slash makeup radio station?

[Mimi Pond]

Well, no, that station never made it because the war came along. So, no, they go back to Britain and the following year you get, there's. Here's where the really fun intrigue starts. You've got Nancy, who disapproves of them mightily, has already gone to the authorities and said, I think my sister should be imprisoned. I think she's a danger to our country.

[Kate Lister]

And this is Nancy, the author.

[Mimi Pond]

The author, the eldest. Yeah. But the authorities have had their eye on Mosley and Diana for a while anyway. So the war is declared. They have a wartime Act, Regulation 18B, that says that they can put you in prison if they even just suspect you of treason. 1940 rolls around and they arrest Oswald Mosley. And Diana is outraged. You know, what are the charges? And like, ma', am, there are no charges. What did you do? And she's outraged, just outraged. But what does she do? She goes and hides her autographed silver framed photo of Hitler that he's given them as a wedding present under her baby's mattress. Right.

[Kate Lister]

Oh, it's so bad, it's so bad.

[Mimi Pond]

And then a month later, they came for her. And so they were in prison for three and a half years, and she was in Holloway Prison. Very grim conditions. Very grim. And Nancy finally wrote to her and said, darling, I had no idea I was allowed to write. Which was completely a lie, because her sisters, you know, Unity and Pam, their sister Pam, and their mother had been writing and visiting for some time. And, in fact, the really juiciest bit of all is that Diana did not know that Nancy had dropped a dime on her until after Nancy was dead, after she had nursed Nancy through her painful battle with cancer in, like, 1972.

[Kate Lister]

I can't. I can't say that I think she did the wrong thing, though. I think that. That she. Yeah, I think that they should have been in prison.

[Mimi Pond]

Yeah. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And eventually they were allowed to be housed together in a cottage on the grounds of the prison. And then Oswald Mosley developed phlebitis, and Churchill relented and let them out early. And the public was outraged. It was like, put them back. Put them back. There was riots and marches, and it was nuts.

[Kate Lister]

So at the time, then, they were.

[Mimi Pond]

The most hated couple in Britain.

[Kate Lister]

Wow. God. Well, I thought maybe maybe they'd kept it a bit quieter, but they. I mean, I know Oswald Mosley was well known for this, but Diana was everyone knew as well, and she was a publicly reviled figure, too.

[Mimi Pond]

Yeah.

[Kate Lister]

Okay, good, good. What was it like in jail for her? I mean, the time that.

[Mimi Pond]

It was hideous, because it was, like, you know, absolutely Victorian horror conditions. Rats and open sewage. And this is all happening during the Blitz. Imagine you're in prison and you're being bombed by your best buddies. And so, you know, so. So, yeah, there it was. It was truly grim. And, you know, they're allowed something like 4 ounces of water, drinking water a day, but at the same time, there was no charges against them. So they could order food brought in from, like, Harrods. And there was a newspaper that had said something about Diana that wasn't true. She sued them and won, and with the proceeds bought a fur coat to wear in prison because it was so cold.

[Kate Lister]

Wow. Okay, So a very mixed bag, then. That's all right. So how long were they in jail for? When were they let out?

[Mimi Pond]

Three and a half years.

[Kate Lister]

Okay, okay. Was the war over by that point, when they got let out?

[Mimi Pond]

Yeah. And then they had to go find someplace else to live, and there was a great housing shortage, and they wound up in this medieval inn in a small village somewhere where they had to, you know, tidy it up just to live there. And now this place is some kind of exclusive, you know, destination spa hot.

[Kate Lister]

And was there any regret? Cause, like, obviously, you know, the war happened. It's terrible. Nazism and fascism has been revealed in all its awful glory. Surely there must have been, like, a whole lot of people going, oh, yeah, sort of. Any regrets at all from those two?

[Mimi Pond]

Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no. And here's what no one else. I have to give myself credit here because I'm going through all these books about the Mitfords and all these books about Diana and Mosley, and nowhere do I see any mention of this. Around 1950, they started their own publishing imprint called Euphorion Books. And the only book they ever had that made a profit, that became a bestseller was a book by a former Nazi fighter pilot called Stuka Pilot. And I can't remember his name, but I looked him up, and it turns out that this guy, this guy is responsible for ferrying former Nazis out of Germany to South America.

[Kate Lister]

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, it's awful.

[Mimi Pond]

So, you know, it was just like, oh, no, she's too beautiful. We'll just brush that under the rug. Because Diana, I mean, she was, like, ridiculously beautiful. It was just completely unfair.

[Kate Lister]

And we will let you get away with a lot if you're very pretty, but we do. We have to draw the line at hardcore Nazism, I think. Think even the British.

[Mimi Pond]

Apparently not.

[Kate Lister]

Even the British.

[Mimi Pond]

Apparently not.

[Kate Lister]

Hey, what about. What about the younger one? What about Unity? What's she doing when her older sister's in jail? Getting fur coats?

[Mimi Pond]

Oh, my. Oh, well, okay, let's back up a little bit.

[Kate Lister]

Okay.

[Mimi Pond]

Britain declares war on Germany. Unity is living in Munich. She's bereft. She's heartbroken. The two countries she loves most are now at war with each other. She's been telling people she's gonna do this if this happens. She has this little pistol. She goes to the English garden in Munich and she shoots herself in the head. But she's well known enough that of course somebody notices and they know it's her. And she's raced to the hospital. They can't get the bullet out of her brain. Hitler comes to visit her. So she's alive, but she has brain damage. And she wakes up enough to realize where she is. And she tries to swallow her diamond studded Nazi swastika pin that Hitler has given her so that she can finish the job. But that doesn't work. So she's packed off back to England. She's sent on a private railway car to Switzerland, where her mother Sidney and her youngest sister, Debo are there to meet the train and bring her back to England. And there's a huge, huge kerfuffle when she arrives in Britain, because by now she's absolutely hated because she's published a letter in Dercet Sturmer, which was Germany's most vitriolically anti Semitic newspaper there was. And in fact, even Hitler and Goebbels were like, you know, ixnay on the uj, like it's too much even for them. But she's published a letter in Der Sturmer saying, I want the world to know that I am a Jew hater, you know, and she's already made herself famous through that, and everybody hates her. So she's taken off to recover in the English countryside with her mother and her youngest sister, Debo, who's still living at home. And she's just very erratic. She's been reduced, they say, to the mental age of 12. So she, oddly enough, recovers enough that she's allowed to drive. And ultimately, Sidney, her mother, takes her to a small island in the Hebrides called Inch Kenneth, where their father has so wisely bought the island and a house there.

[Kate Lister]

Smart.

[Mimi Pond]

Dabo later would say it took longer to get to Inch Kenneth than it took to fly to Brazil. But this is a house they keep there. And so they're living on Inch Kenneth. And in 1948, I think it was Unity succumbed to meningitis from the infection from the bullet still in her brain.

[Kate Lister]

Okay, so that's. It's difficult, isn't it? Cause you wanna say that's a sad story, but then again, she wrote a horrible article in a horrible paper and sounds like.

[Mimi Pond]

Well, she. I mean, I think there was just something. Just something really wrong with her. I feel sorrier for Unity than I do. I have no patience with Diana at all. Diana was very smart, and Diana knew exactly what she was doing. And I think Unity was just cracked.

[Kate Lister]

She sounds a bit. I know that's not a professional diagnosis, but she sounds a bit cracked.

[Mimi Pond]

Cracked, not a professional diagnosis.

[Kate Lister]

Yeah, but she, like, she sounds like she's, like, she's quite unstable. Like, she's gone over there, like, to suddenly up and move to Germany to stalk Hitler. Like, that's got a rate pretty high on anyone's criteria list of cracked. What were the rest of the family doing at this point? Like, were they worried about these two?

[Mimi Pond]

They were terribly worried about Unity. They got a call finally on, like, Christmas Eve from Unity, who was in a hospital saying, I want to Come home. How old is she? And they hadn't heard anything. They'd gotten a letter from a friend of the family who'd said that she was ill and in the hospital, but they didn't know anything else.

[Kate Lister]

How old was she when she did this? When she ends up in the hospital?

[Mimi Pond]

Let's see. I think she was about 23 or so.

[Kate Lister]

So she's young then and she's just kind of vanished to Germany with no. And her family didn't know where she was. She's just off stalking Hitler. Yeah, that would terrify you. That would absolutely terrify.

[Mimi Pond]

They were out of their minds. And at the same time, though, Jessica had run away. Jessica the communist? Yeah. Well, there's so much. There's just so many sisters and so much. Jessica had started a running away fund when she was 12. Like I said, they all had their exit strategies. And she said, she kept saying, I'm going to do it. I'm going to run away. I'm getting out of here. This is nowheresville. She had a cousin named Esmond Romilly, who was Winston Churchill's nephew, who was like. He was like the wild child. He had started the equivalent of an underground newspaper that was distributed at boys boarding schools in England, all about how evil boys boarding schools were and the corruption and the sexual abuse and all that stuff. And it was being widely distributed. And he wrote a book that was reviewed by George Bernard Shaw and he was like literally the fair haired child of the revolutionary movement and a just complete wild rebel. He ran away to fight in the Spanish Civil War and almost everyone in his division was killed and he was invalided back to England with cholera or something. And they had a mutual cousin who had a country house where Jessica was invited for a weekend party and met him there. And she had been following his exploits in the media and already had developed this mad crush on him.

[Kate Lister]

They do this a lot, the minifunds. They just seemed like. She seemed to get crushes from afar. They read about someone and they're just like, yep, that's the one for me.

[Mimi Pond]

That's the one for me. And they double down. Man, do they ever double down. They are the queens of the doubling down.

[Kate Lister]

Oh, dear.

[Mimi Pond]

And over dinner, she says, you know, are you going back to Spain? And he says, yeah. And he says, can I come with you? And he says, well, she says, I've got 50 pounds, which was like the equivalent of like $1,000 today. It was a lot of money. And he's like, okay, let's go, you know, And So they ran away together to Spain to cover the sp. Spanish Civil War. Her family, for a time, also didn't know where she was. And this was before Unity had tried to commit suicide. And the family was completely beside themselves. You know, there was headlines in the. In the newspapers like, mitford, daughter trapped in hut in the Pyrenees. All kinds of speculation.

[Kate Lister]

Oh, God. Wow.

[Mimi Pond]

And finally they found out that they were in Spain, and they had enough pull with the government where they sent a British destroyer that was going to go down there and pick up Spanish refugees and take them to a refugee camp in France to pick up Jessica and Esmond Romilly. And of course, they said, no, we're not going. We're not getting on that boat. And they're like, oh, gee, you know, we were gonna take these refugees to France, but if you're not getting on the boat, we can't do that.

[Kate Lister]

Smart.

[Mimi Pond]

So they had to get on the boat and go back to France. And Nancy and her then husband, Peter Rod, met them at the boat. And Nancy told. Told Jessica, unity's so jealous. You were on posters, meaning those big posters that the newspapers would have at newspaper stands that would trumpet the headlines of the day. By then, of course, Jessica was pregnant, and they got married and eventually came back to London and lived in the slums and had a baby daughter who sadly died of the measles because there was a measles outbreak. And she had been told at a local clinic that she would pass her immunity on through her breast milk. But their mother was kind of like the original anti vaxxer. Sidney was. She's like, the good body will heal itself. So she never had any of those childhood diseases. And so her daughter died. And after that, they decided to leave Britain. They came to the States and embarked. She and Esmond embarked upon their American adventure. And because of their aristocratic connections, they met Eugene Meyer. And it was that Eugene Meyer bought the Washington Post and gave Esmond a job as, like, a roving reporter reporting on things from time to time. They both worked at a lot of different jobs. They hustled. They decided to. They were going to, like, drive to New Orleans, and Esmond was going to become a waiter, and they could make money that way. But they took a wrong turn and they wound up in Miami, where they ran a bar in an Italian restaurant for a while.

[Kate Lister]

Wow. Okay.

[Mimi Pond]

But they had made friends with people in D.C. who were very influential. The Durs. This couple, who. He was a lawyer and his wife was an activist. They were from Birmingham, Alabama, and Virginia Durr became Extremely active in trying to get the poll tax repealed in the south, which was keeping black people from voting. And so she became a huge influence on Jessica. And Jessica went to work. Esmond went to Canada to join the Canadian Royal Air Force so that he could get in the fight. And he was shot down over the North Sea. And she was absolutely devastated by then. They had another daughter, Constancia, named after a Spanish Civil War heroine whose then her name actually was and still is Dinky Dinky Romilly. And she's a good friend and she's been very helpful to me. Wow.

[Kate Lister]

Wow.

[Mimi Pond]

I know.

[Kate Lister]

Oh, my God. That's amazing.

[Mimi Pond]

Jessica went to work doing clerical work for the government in D.C. and rose in the ranks of the typing pool and became involved in the office of opa. There was price protections during the war so people. People weren't getting screwed over by wildly fluctuating prices. And met this lawyer who was working for the same organization and Bob Truehoft. And they got married, moved to San Francisco after the war and became active in civil rights and union rights activism in the Bay area throughout the 1950s. Jessica also went with three other women, drove to Mississippi to campaign four a wrongly convicted black man who'd been convicted of rape and went door to door in Laurel, Mississippi, asking people to sign a petition to overthrow his conviction, which sadly did not happen. I mean, she was boots on the ground always. And the two of them were very committed communist for years and years. And then were also got caught up in the HUAC hearings and. Oh, there's so much.

[Kate Lister]

It really is.

[Mimi Pond]

How much time have you got?

[Kate Lister]

I'll be back with Mimi after this short break.

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[Mimi Pond]

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[Kate Lister]

We should briefly mention Deborah Mitford who went on to become the Duchess of Devonshire. Because as if these sisters haven't covered enough ground between them is through.

[Mimi Pond]

They knew everyone. Everything they did and said had something to do with every aspect of world history throughout the 20th century. So Diana was a debutante alongside of Kick Kennedy, who was Kathleen's Kennedy, who was the sister of John F. Kennedy and the daughter of Joseph Kennedy, who was at the time the American ambassador at the Court of St. James. And they became good friends partly because Kit Kennedy was engaged to the Duke of Devonshire's older son. They got married against the wishes of both their families, and then three months later, he died in action. And then Deborah had married his younger brother, Andrew, and now she and he were poised to become the next Duke and Duchess of Devonshire through this tragic act. And then Kick Kennedy was dallying around with another aristocrat in about 1947, and they died in a plane crash. And her family wouldn't take the body. So she's buried at Chatsworth, in Ensor, in the churchyard there. And so Deborah became good friends, some say more than good friends, with jfk.

[Kate Lister]

Oh, well, jfk. I mean, like, he would. If anything stayed still long enough, he'd have a go at it, wouldn't he? That's my understand, right?

[Mimi Pond]

I mean, and if you're unhappily married to an alcoholic, you know, and you got an opportunity to be with the leader of the free world, why wouldn't.

[Kate Lister]

You flash your handsome smile, right? And then there's Pamela Mitford, who I think might actually be my favorite. Just the quiet one, looking around at everyone going, what the fuck is going on here?

[Mimi Pond]

Pam married Derek Jackson, who I like to refer to as a vigorous bisexual.

[Kate Lister]

Oh. Oh, I like that. Okay, so not entirely quiet, then.

[Mimi Pond]

No, no. And here's the thing. Derek Jackson's father started the News of the World, and so he was the heir to this great fortune. And he was also a fricking rocket scientist, a literal rocket scientist, but he also kind of had fascist leanings and he was in the raf, and he would blither this fascist nonsense at them and make disparaging remarks about Jews, and they just kind of had to put up with it because he was so good at his job. So she may have been more over to that side of things, but she, like I said, she was very soft spoken. And I think she and Unity may have had a kind of. Of sense of humor that was so ineffable that not even their most articulate sister, Jessica, sisters, Jessica or Nancy, could tell you why it was they were so funny. But there were. And Benji, Jessica's younger son with Bob Trewh, told me that he met her a couple of times and that she was absolutely hilarious and she just wanted to stay in the background. She had had polio as a child and had been cruel. Fully taunted by Nancy for that and just kind of, like, stayed in the background. Wanted to live a quiet country life. Loved animals. She ran the farm for Brian Guinness and for Diana. When they were still married, they had a farm, and she became the manager of the farm and learned a lot as she went along. In fact, one of the first things she did was go to an auction to buy a cow, only to discover that the cow she'd bought was not a cow. She said, the brute is bagless.

[Kate Lister]

Oh, we've all been there.

[Mimi Pond]

But she became quite the poultry expert. And Debo, late in life, said Pam should have her own chicken chat show.

[Kate Lister]

Just such. Such different people from one family. It really is quite extraordinary. So as a final question, then, I'm sure you've been asked this one before, but if you were gonna meet one of them, if you're gonna go out for dinner, dinner with one of them. Not who'd you like the best? Who would you like to sit down with and have. And have a conversation? Who are you going with?

[Mimi Pond]

Well, I think Jessica's always going to be my favorite because she was so funny and so sharp and so witty and just would be so much fun. I'd be a bit afraid of Nancy because she hated Americans. She never visited America. She just, like, hated them on principle. She'd worked at Haywood Hill bookshop in London during the war and encountered American tourists and had just made up her mind that was it. She was never gonna deal with Americans. So Jessica would be my choice, first of all. Then maybe. Maybe Debo. Nancy, of course, would be a dream. But again, she really could be very mean. Her mother described her as being like a sparkling fish. Lore that is disguised under the feathers as a nasty hook.

[Kate Lister]

Ooh.

[Mimi Pond]

Ooh.

[Kate Lister]

Okay. Oh, Mimi, you have been fascinating to talk to. Thank you so much for dropping by to tell us about this completely bonkers family. Should we give you the title of your book again? Because people should run out and get it.

[Mimi Pond]

Do admit. The Mitford sisters and me. And the do admit is they would fight with each other. And, you know, they try to convince you to come over to their side of the argument of, like, a do admit.

[Kate Lister]

Oh, I love being.

[Mimi Pond]

Being the only sister of two brothers. I could never get my brothers to admit they would never admit.

[Kate Lister]

My siblings never admit with me either. Thank you so much. Mimi, if people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you?

[Mimi Pond]

Well, I have a website, mimipond.com and I'm on Instagram at Mimi Pond, so I'm posting all the time. I post little videos. Can't compare to yours, of course, but been doing a series called Mitfords in a minute.

[Kate Lister]

Amazing where.

[Mimi Pond]

Where I spew out, you know, all these incredible crazy facts about them.

[Kate Lister]

Oh, I love that. Right, we'll go and check that out. Thank you so much. You have been spectacular. Well, thanks.

[Mimi Pond]

It's been absolutely a pleasure. I could go on.

[Kate Lister]

Thank you for listening and thank you so much to Mimi for joining me. And if you like what you heard, don't forget to like review and follow along, whatever as you get your podcasts coming up, we have got episodes on the origins of Aphrodite and the truth about mythical women all coming your way. If you want us to explore a subject or if you just fancied saying hello, then you can email [e-mail] this podcast was edited by Tim Arstel and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Freddie Chick. Join me again Betwixt the Sheets the history of sex scandal in society. A podcast by History hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.