The Mitford sisters are on TV! New Brit Box series “Outrageous”

I'm looking forward to this; I'm guessing that a lot more brit had Hitler/Nazi sympathies/tendencies than they were later willing to admit, but to go full Nazi the way these women of privilege did - it would be interesting to better understand it

Jessica, the youngest, went full Communist.

The fascists and the communists in the family stopped speaking.

Unity and Diane were monsters.

I. Watched the first two episodes—it’s fantastic! I’ve read two books on this family. Series does great job capturing them and highly entertaining.

[quote]I wish I had BritBox.

If you have Amazon Prime, you can get a free trial of BritBox.

It has been described as Downton Abbey with added fascism.

Nazis r’ Us

Thanks, R5. I will try that out for sure.

I certainly want to watch. Bessie Carter has been great as Featherington daughter in Bridgerton, so I'm curious what else she can do.

Nancy thought Diana was such a threat to national security that she denounced her to the authorities, leading to her incarceration for most of WW2. I always liked Nancy.

Jessica may have been Communist but she was also the most progressive of any of them.

Unity’s infatuation with Hitler was nuts. Do you think he slept with her?

DL Fave James Purefoy plays the girls' "Farve". Joshua Sasse is Oswald Mosely. Toby Rigbo plays the twink brother Tom.

Thank you for letting us know about this, OP.

I love Bessie Carter…great actor

I might subscribe just for this. I find the Mitford sisters fascinating

I think I pay 11.99/month for my Britbox and $6.99 for my Acorn subscriptions. Well worth it for both OP.

It helped that the Mitford sisters had MONEY& very good connections in British High Society.

Most of that family was nuts!!!

[quote]The fascists and the communists in the family stopped speaking.

But the farmers and the cowboys became friends.

Diana the Fascist, Jessica the Communist, Unity the Hitler-lover; Nancy the Novelist; Deborah the Duchess and Pamela the unobtrusive poultry connoisseur.

Pamela was a lesbian.

Deborah Mitford was classic posh... great friend of royalty, the then Prince of Wales, now King, in particular.

Only a bonafide, bonkers aristo would have a funeral with a wicker casket, Charles and Camilla and a brass band playing New York, New York.

Is the series released weekly or is it binge and burn?

In the UK it's being shown on UKTV which people outside the UK may be able to access with a VPN.

In addition to Jim Carter and Dame Imelda Staunton's child the series also stars Richard Attenborough and Sylvia Sim' grandson and the nephew of Jeremy Irons and Sinead Cusack.

In her memoir "Hons and Rebels," Jessica said for every swastika her sister Unity would scratch with a diamond on the window of their former playroom, she would scratch a hammer and sickle.

R2, Debo was the youngest. She became the Duchess of Devonshire.

Nancy and Jessica are both hilarious writers. I recommend Jessica's memoir and Nancy's novels, particularly "The Pursuit of Love," "Love in a Cold Climate," and "Christmas Pudding."

The Pursuit of Love was adapted by Emily Mortimer (who steals the show with a small part) and starring Lily James and Dominic West and DL fav Andrew Scott. It is on Prime and is hilarious. Offbeat take, but really enjoyable. Sort of Downton Abbey meets Saltburn without the worst of either.

I read “The Pursuit of Love” years ago and remember very little but I do remember the family playing fox hunt and the children were the foxes and the father would chase with guns - for fun.

I’ve no idea if this was something she drew upon from memory.

[quote]Unity’s infatuation with Hitler was nuts. Do you think he slept with her?

No, I've read a lot about the sisters and it's generally agreed that he didn't. Though as one sister put it, she would if he'd asked her.

The 1980 Love in a Cold Climate is wonderful.

R22 Debo loved Elvis. Bill Clinton arranged for her to see Graceland.

I watched the first two episodes. It didn’t bring these extraordinary characters to life. Nice production values, but one big mistake is toning down the way they spoke. They were so posh they hardly used consonants. Nobody has spoken like that for many years, but it was a distinctive marker of social rank.

Here’s Diana being interviewed by the great Mavis Nicholson.She was a vile, unrepentant fascist till the end. She would have rolled out the red carpet had Hitler succeeded in invading the UK.

When Debo was a teenager a family friend condescendingly asked her if she was looking forward to marrying Mr Right. She replied that in fact she was rather looking forward to marrying the Duke of Right.

Which she did, in a roundabout way - married the second son of the Duke of Devonshire whose elder brother the Marquess of Hartington was heir to the dukedom. Hartington was married to Kick Kennedy - sister of JFK. When he was killed in WWII Debo’s husband became heir and then they were Duke and Duchess after the death of the previous Duke.

Debo was sister-in-law to JFK’s sister.

[quote]The 1980 Love in a Cold Climate is wonderful.

I've not seen that but the 2001 BBC version was on Netflix and is marvellous. It doesn't have Judi Dench but it does have Rosamund Pike, Alan Bates, Celie Imrie, Daniel Evans and Frances Barber as The Bolter.

[quote]No, I've read a lot about the sisters and it's generally agreed that he didn't. Though as one sister put it, she would if he'd asked her.

How pathetic, though I guess I would not be surprised if Hitler was some creepy incel that wanted to no part of her, but would gladly pass her off to some other high ranking brown shirt. Aside from being a weird, ugly person, Unity was clearly an incompetent one too to botch a shot to the head.

I watched the first two episodes & its entertaining in a silly/don't have to pay close attention way, but as I watched it, I couldn't help but think that if not for their social rank, notoriety & beauty, they'd be just another bunch of dim bitches that latched on to ideologies they didn't really understand or could relate to because they could be so easily influenced. The exception being of course Nancy (clever but clueless) and the youngest Deb, who is played by the ugliest actress.

The Diane character is clearly dickamatized by Mosely, but just seems like an empty vessel of a person. I like the costumes, scenery and the actors are relatively good (even it is a nepo-fest), but these characters aren't as interesting as I'd thought they'd be. Maybe it will pick up once WWII comes along & everyone has to stop bitching & pick aside. That & the communist is just annoying.

I wouldn't call any of them dim, except for Unity, who I really think was "slow." Maybe mentally disabled (and I mean even before she shot herself).

It's obvious Nancy and Jessica were quite intelligent. Deborah too seems plenty bright if you read her books. It's hard to know Pam except via what her sisters said about her.

Diana's story is crazy. She had a great life till she was dickmatized, as R36 so accurately put it. She had a handsome, nice and *very* wealthy husband who was crazy about her. Two healthy kids and a wide circle of creative and influential friends. Then she ran off with this sleazy fascist who was not only married but cheated on her too - and she was one of the great beauties of her age. He must have had incredible charisma in person because his photos are not impressive.

The Mosley family are really very tragic.

Ozzie and Di had 2 sons - Alexander and Max. Alexander died in 2005 and is the father of Loius Mosley who is the head of Palantir in the UK.

The handsome Max ended up running Formula 1 and was involved in a S&M scandal involving a party where he was spanked so hard he bled, and although it was dubbed a "Nazi sex party", one of the prostitutes was wearing a military uniform that wasn't a Nazi uniform.

And one of Max's sons died from a heroin overdose age 40, which he blamed on the public shame of the media coverage. Mosley then bankrolled a privacy campaign.

“Ozzie and Di”?

Well, maybe "dim" is a bitch harsh, but they were the Kardashians of their day

[quote]It doesn't have Judi Dench but it does have Rosamund Pike, Alan Bates, Celie Imrie, Daniel Evans and Frances Barber as The Bolter.

And best of all it has the hilarious Sheila Gish as Lady Montdore. She's the funniest thing in the whole series.

"BRUSH!"

I have BritBox. Is this good?

It's pretty fun, r42. The sisters are all vivid characters (except for Pam, who is barely present), and they have great sets (palatial houses) and 30s clothes. Bessie Hunter is really good as Nancy, although she's much plainer than the actual Nancy Mitford.

It's a bit unsettling to see James Purefoy now to play "Farve," Lord Redesdale--I still think of him as playing hunks, and now he's playing someone in late middle age.

Jessica's "Hons and Rebels"!is a wonderful book - as is "The American Way of Death."

She and her American second husband were major financial supporters of the Civil Rights Movement.

(She's my favorite Mitford.)

I read a biography about the family.it must have been about 10 years ago. Fascinating. I liked the communist sister. Unity was absolutely insane for Adolf. Diana and her husband were horrid people.

Isn't there a second season coming up? It ends rather abruptly.

They're absolutely nothing like the Kardashians who are tacky hos who used their hoeness to become famous for doing nothing.

Diana is detestable and Unity was crackers but both Nancy and Jessica were very talented writers.

Debo married well but even she produced some decent books.

The Kardashians make make up and shitty tv that idiots watch.

Nancy Mitford was also well-known for her essay about the words that distinguished Upper Class (UC) from people who thought they knew how UC people spoke. In most cases, the UC words were simpler and less pretentious.

[quote]I have BritBox. Is this good?

I didn't think the sisters themselves were particularly interesting and you never entirely understand why Unity was such a weirdo, other than perhaps she was on the spectrum (before anyone understood what the spectrum was) and because she didn't fit in anywhere else, she latched onto the Nazi thing to give some purpose to her life. Likewise, why is Diane such a monster? Yeah, she was taken in by Oswald, but you get the sense she'd be just as horrible if he never came on the scene.

Like Nancy Mitford's stories, I think show as interesting in that it gives insight into this vanished world: the cash-poor landed gentry who had to keep up appearances, yet their daily lives involved no hot water, grim dinners and constant work to get by. I actually liked the Mitford mother the best of all and Nancy seemed like a bit of a tragic character. If she'd had an education & didn't need to hitch herself to some loser to satisfy society, who knows what she could've done.

Any UK gossip about Will Attenborough, grandson of actor/ director Richard? I know he’s blond, green-eyed, gay and inclined to plumpness.

Anything else we should know?

I hope its depiction of Diana is more accurate than that in Peaky Blinders. They should've given her another name in that series since she was so unlike the real Lady Mosely.

*Mosley

How can you not find them "interesting"?

Upper class British family full of Fascism and over the top behaviour.

The father was abusive. The mother was a bit of a twit. The boy seemed to veer towards Fascism but two of the daughters completely embraced it.

Then, you have the farmer dyke daughter (the least odd of the bunch)....the novelist who had tragic doomed love affairs...the wry Communist who went to America and became a respected writer....and the debutante who became a duchess. Oh, and they all quarreled and feuded with each other for decades.

So not interesting....

I thought the son was gay.

With those sisters, how could he be anything but?

With a name like Unity Valkyrie, how could you not be anything but odd? She was doomed from the start.

I had not been aware, my bad, at how the Nazi movement gained so much popularity among upper class Brits. At its root was hatred of Jews. Shameful. I first saw it in Remains of the Day, the movie with Anthony Hopkins. But I thought then it was just a dramatic conceit. When I looked into it, I saw it was an actual movement. To discover the Mitfords had some connections to it through Unity and Diana was very surprising to me.

Diana was such a mystery to me. She had it all, gorgeous, well-connected and was married to a Guinness heir, but threw it all away for fascist Mosely. Was she dickmatized?

[quote]I had not been aware, my bad, at how the Nazi movement gained so much popularity among upper class Brits.

That was a very interesting aspect of the story: of how the country was still in shambles from WWI, a lot of people out of work and even the landed gentry-types who lost money during "the crash" were scrambling to maintain their standard of living. Not unlike our own times, I guess, when things go bad everyone is looking for someone to blame for their troubles. You get the sense that if Hitler had limited his domination to certain countries & certain groups, the Brits would've been just fine with what they were doing.

I tried watching but I was bored. Does it get better after the first episode?

Shit, that was James Purefoy? Just a few years ago he was doing Hap and Leonard and still looked hot.

R59 “Chips” Channon’s diaries confirm this to the nth degree. British aristos were literally dancing to Hitler’s tune for the cameras during the Berlin Olympics. Shameless anti-Semites.

[quote]Nancy seemed like a bit of a tragic character. If she'd had an education & didn't need to hitch herself to some loser to satisfy society, who knows what she could've done.

She did a lot, including being awarded the Légion d'Honneur.

I'm enjoying it.

I'm hoping there's a second season. They really were fascinating. Decca had quite a life

[quote] Nancy seemed like a bit of a tragic character. If she'd had an education & didn't need to hitch herself to some loser to satisfy society, who knows what she could've done.

What the fuck are you talking about? She was a bestselling novelist.

To R62-The majority of the British Aristocracy loved Adolf& the way the Nazis were overtaking Europe. Most of the Aristos agreed with the treatment of Jews in Germany, many thought it would be temporary-Yeah Right!!

Of course, the views changed after the BOMBS began to fall on the major cities, most of the Aristos became PRO-ENGLAND, NAZIS BAD!! When I was working in England after 1986, I had so much FUN asking these assholes which Family had the most Nazi sympathizers before& after WW2. The families were not amused by me laughing at them.

R67 maybe they did at first. But once it was clear that Germany would not be satisfied with a couple of countries, and started rolling into France it was obvious the UK was going to have to fight for their lives. That changed everyone's perspective except the hard core f ascists.

Joe Kennedy was betting on Hitler with Chamberlain’s glowing approval as US Ambassador until 1940. Churchill was a voice in the wilderness as Hitler rolled over Europe.

It’s been said that JFK was proof father doesn’t [italic]always[/italic] know best when it came to politics.

R67 there's a certain irony in you joking about another country only joining WW2 after the bombs began to fall.

Joe Kennedy Sr. was wrong about just about everything.

"I'm going to stake all my hopes on Joe, Jr.!"

"Sons, use your wives only for breeding and find mistresses for pleasure! Your wives won't care! God knows your mother doesn't!"

"Rosemary is overamorous? Let's give her a full frontal lobotomy! it will calm her down, and the doctors say it can't possibly hurt her."

"You girls want to invite your friends over for the weekend? Great! Just put them next to my bedroom--they'll feel safer there!"

"Hitler is the wave of the future!"

They rather whitewash the fascism in the family. It wasn't just Unity and Diana. Murv was equally fascistic, which is why she eventually split from Farve. Tom was so pro-Nazi he refused to fight the Germans, and his karma got him by dying fighting the Japanese, a lower race. It was never clear that Pamela and Deborah were quite as fascistic as the others, but they probably were.

All this is even more reason why Jessica is truly a remarkable woman -- she renounced all of it and fought for basic human rights in America for the rest of her own life. She was also the best writer of the lot. Nancy's fiction is not on a par with Waugh or even close to E.F. Benson (whose scathing satire of English manners deserves more attention).

Unity was fucking nuts. On the spectrum? The idea of British society is so fucking weird to me

I'm gonna disagree with you, E72 about Nancy's writing talent. The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate are just delicious little bitter comedies. And, unlike Benson, who I also like very much, she didn't natter on longer than necessary. Benson's books all feel like they could use an edit...especially all the damn bridge talk.

I like Nancy's little history/biographies, too. They're short and deliciously dry.

There were lots of American Nazi sympathizers - Charles Lindbergh was one of only many. The Bush forebear, Prescott Bush, did huge business with Nazi Germany. He was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany. We don't know if he was a Nazi sympathizer or not, but he clearly had not conscience whatsoever about helping the Nazi regime succeed financially while making a hefty profit himself .

His business dealings, which continued until his company's assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act, has led more than 60 years later to a civil action for damages being brought in Germany against the Bush family by two former slave labourers at Auschwitz. Documents reveal that the firm he worked for, Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH), acted as a US base for the German industrialist, Fritz Thyssen, who helped finance Hitler in the 1930s before falling out with him at the end of the decade. The Guardian has seen evidence that shows Bush was the director of the New York-based Union Banking Corporation (UBC) that represented Thyssen's US interests and he continued to work for the bank after America entered the war.

R70: What irony? R67 didn’t say that. Why did you suggest he did?

The UK declared war on Germany in September of 1939. Chamberlain’s Conservative government (the party of the aristocracy) continued to seek a negotiated peace during the “phony war” during the winter of ‘39 and ‘40 until the German Blitzkreig had overrun Belgium and the Netherlands, invaded Norway, and was about to conquer France.

The UK’s ruling classes were perfectly happy with Hitler long after the rest of Europe had recognized him for what he was.

The police on the side of the blackshirts reminded me that there's nothing new under the sun, as our grandmothers used to say

R75 you forgot Henry Ford.