Diana Mitford - Early Life

Early Life

Diana Mitford was the daughter of David Bertram Ogilvy Freeman-Mitford, 2nd Baron Redesdale (1878–1958, son of Algernon Freeman-Mitford, 1st Baron Redesdale), and his wife, Sydney (1880–1963), daughter of Thomas Gibson Bowles, MP. Mitford was born in Belgravia and raised in the country estate of Batsford Park, then from the age of 10 at the family home, Asthall Manor, in Oxfordshire and later at Swinbrook House, a home her father had built in the village of Swinbrook. She was educated at home by a series of governesses except for a six month period in 1926 when she was sent to a day school in Paris. In childhood, her younger sisters Jessica Mitford ("Decca") and Deborah Cavendish, 11th Duchess of Devonshire ("Debo") were particularly devoted to her. Her eldest sister Nancy was jealous of Diana's beauty and popularity with the friends she would bring home to Asthall or Swinbrook.

At the age of 18, she became secretly engaged to Bryan Walter Guinness shortly after her presentation at Court. Guinness, an Irish aristocrat, writer and brewing heir, would inherit the barony of Moyne. Her parents were initially opposed to the engagement but in time were persuaded. Sydney was particularly uneasy at the thought of two such young people having possession of such a large fortune, but she was eventually convinced Bryan was a suitable husband. They married on 30 January 1929, her sisters Jessica and Deborah were too ill to attend the ceremony. The couple had an income of £20,000 a year, an estate in Biddesden, Hampshire, and houses in London and Dublin. They were well known for hosting aristocratic society events involving the Bright Young People. The writer Evelyn Waugh exclaimed that her beauty "ran through the room like a peal of bells", and he dedicated the novel Vile Bodies, a satire of the Roaring Twenties, to the couple. Her portrait was painted by Augustus John, Pavel Tchelitchew and Henry Lamb. The couple had two sons, Jonathan (b. 1930), and Desmond (b. 1931).

In February 1932 Diana met Sir Oswald Mosley at a garden party at the home of noted society hostess Emerald Cunard. He went on to become leader of the British Union of Fascists, and Diana became his mistress; he was at the time married to Lady Cynthia Curzon, a daughter of Lord Curzon, former Viceroy of India and his first wife, American mercantile heiress Mary Victoria Leiter. Diana left her husband but Sir Oswald would not leave his wife. Quite suddenly, Cynthia died in 1933 of peritonitis. While Mosley was devastated by the death of his wife, he soon started an affair with her younger sister Lady Alexandra Metcalfe.

Owing to Diana's parents' disapproval over her decision to leave Guinness for Mosley, she was briefly estranged from most of her family. Her affair and eventual marriage to Mosley also strained relationships with her sisters. Initially, Jessica and Deborah were not permitted to see Diana as she was "living in sin" with Mosley in London. Deborah eventually got to know Mosley and ended up liking him very much. Jessica despised Mosley's beliefs and became permanently estranged from Diana after the late 1930s. Pam and her husband Derek Jackson got along well with Mosley. Nancy never liked Mosley and, like Jessica, despised his political beliefs, but was able to learn to tolerate him for the sake of her relationship with Diana. Nancy wrote the novel Wigs on the Green, which satirised Mosley and his beliefs. After it was published in 1935 relations between the sisters became strained to non-existent and it was not until the mid 1940s that they were able to get back to being close again.

The couple rented Wooton Lodge, a country house in Staffordshire which Diana had intended to buy. She furnished much of her new home with much of the Swinbrook furniture that her father was selling. The Mosleys lived at Wooton Lodge along with their children from 1936 to 1939.