Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - The Truth About the Mitford Sisters

Episode Date: November 25, 2025

The Mitfords could rank as the strangest family of the 20th century.Unity and Diana were passionate fascists who became obsessed with Adolf Hitler, while Jessica became a communist. Unity even became mates with Hitler and was in Germany as the war broke out.How did these aristocrats move in such controversial circles? What happened when the Second World War broke out? How did their stories end?Joining Kate today is the author and cartoonist, Mimi Pond, who has written a new book about the Mitford sisters.This episode was edited by Tim Arstall and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Freddy Chick.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister, you are listening to Betwix 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, book, by adults, other adults about adulty things, in an adulty way covering a range of subjects and you should be an adult too. Shall we proceed together? Let's do it. It's September 1939 and British Socialite Unity Minutes. has 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 groupie 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 Midford 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. Oh, and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the History of Sex Scandal and 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 cartoonist and author Mimi Pond, who has created an amazing graphic biography about all of them.

So without further ado, let's crack on. And welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Mimi Pond. How are you doing? Well, I'm just so excited to be here. I'm such an enormous fan. And I am a huge fan of your work, Mimi. This book is absolutely incredible. It's beautiful. graphic biography of the Mitford sisters. Oh, well, thanks. The Midford sisters, Mimi. Why are you so fascinating with them? Where did this come from?

Well, my parents first stumbled across Jessica Midford'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, 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. And I was like, what? Then I started to read everything I could. All the books that were coming out by them and about them, their letters to each other's, 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. Well, there's a lot to be polite about. They were aristocrats from wealth. I also suppose you can be polite, but my God, there's a lot to be in polite about, isn't there? Holy shitballs, man. What a family.

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. 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? All right, the Midford sisters were six aristocratic sisters born between 1904 and 1920 to a minor aristocrat, the Baron Reedsdale, David Mitford and his wife, Sidney Mitford. They were raised in isolation in the Cotswolds,

in Swinbrook. 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 one inheriting the lot of stuff. And he had a terrible business sense, like monumentally bad business sense. And he couldn't afford to keep this immense estate. So he sold it. They moved to Astell Manor in Swinbrook. 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 The 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 Churchill's and other family members, but they didn't really even socialize that much.

So very much was this hot house 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. 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 go away with the use of table napkins because it costs 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. And they had a son as well, and he went off to Eaton, right? Tom went to Eaton, 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 Fascist. And Teenage Unity had a mad crush on Oswald Mosley and decided Hitler was the bees' 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 a little Debo, who was about 10, said, well, I'm going to marry a Duke. And all of these things happened. Wow.

I suppose it'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 strain, like, was there any sense of this in early childhood about how these women were going to become so different? Well, I think if there were any indications at all, I think possibly unity was probably somewhere out there on a spectrum. Oh, that's interesting.

Okay. If she didn't like the way that conversation was going at the dinner table, she would just slowly slide under the table. And, of course, everyone would just ignore her. I love that. I might try that. It's just just vanishing from view. That's brilliant. And she only ate like mashed potatoes for years, you know, and they just kind of like, okay.

Whenever you get people in history and people try and go back and diagnose them with some kind of neurodivergent condition, you're like, oh, you've got to be careful. I think that one's a safe bet, Mimi. I think it really is. 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 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 went to. 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, you know, she's from an older English aristocratic family. He loved that. And he also loved the fact that her name was Unity Valky Mitford. And that she was actually conceived. This is true. She was conceived. She was conceived in a town in Canada called swastika.

Holy shit, wow. Her father had another one of his hairbrain schemed was prospecting for gold. So he had staked a claim in a town in Canada called swastika. Is it still called swastika? I don't know. You'd change that, wouldn't you? You'd have a meeting and change that. I think there might be a city council meeting.

Sure. Surely. 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? Because of Oswald Mosley. Oh, yes. Yeah, okay. 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.

He was a super creep. Yes, yeah. Even if it wasn't for the fascism, which is pretty bad, he was creepy. Oh, yeah, I mean, he was a completely notorious womanizer. He was sleeping with his wife's sisters, two sisters, and their stepmother. Ew, ew, ew, ew, oh. No. What in the Jerry Springer numsom?

is that. 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. It didn't work. Wow. How did she even meet Oswald Mosley? At a party, you know, at a party. Okay. He was a legitimate politician for a time and was a member of the Conservative Party, and then he jumped over, it became a liberal, and then eventually started the British Union of fascists because, you know, obviously the world needs more fascist, right? You can see the progression. At the time, 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 a new way of looking at things. Whereas communism, communism, you know, the aristocrats' health. had their panties in a twist because the communists had just murdered the cousins of the royal family in Russia, you know. We forget in this country just how pro-fascist we were for a while there. I mean, not everybody.

Oh, yeah, Charles Lindberg, you know, America First. 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. doing that. It was popular, alarmingly popular. Yes, yes, it was. And Oswald Mosley, he was the kind of the ringleader of this. He was the leader of the fascist party in Britain. Oh yeah. I'll be back with Mimi after this short break. So they meet at a party. He's already married and having sex with everybody, it seems. How does it go from they're both married to

they both end up together? 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 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'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 want 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 programs. 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. 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 Goebel's house, you know, basically just pretty much to please Hitler.

And then they're still working there, building that radio station. And then 1939 comes along. And oops. Oops a daisy. Fuck. So she's mates with Hitler as well then? Oh, yeah. Yeah. She took it upon herself to learn German and in fact, Oswald Mosley. Yeah, 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 of 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. 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.

Nice. So, good. Yeah, he wasn't in the best of moods. Oh, did they go and get married in the Gerbils house? See, I suppose there's a tiny, tiny part of me that thought, maybe, maybe Diana hasn't brought into the propaganda hook line and sinker. Oh, no, no, no. No. No. No. No, no, no. By the end of Oswald's life, he's regretting having ever started the BUF. Oh. Diana remained a diehard fascist until the end of her life. Wow. Okay. Okay.

So what happens at the outbreak of war and they're running this light fascism slash makeup radio station? Well, no, the station never made it because the war came. along. So, no, they go back to Britain and the following year, you get, 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. And this is Nancy the author. 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 War Time 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? Like, ma'am, there are no charges. What did he 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. Oh, it's so bad. so bad. 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 and, like, 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. 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. I can't say that I think she did the wrong thing, though. I think that she did that yeah, I think that they should have been in prison. 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. Just like, put them back, put them back. There was riots and marches. And it was nuts. So at the time then, they were the most hated couple in Britain. Wow. God. Well, I thought maybe, maybe they'd kept it a bit, a bit quieter, but they, I mean, I know Oswald Mosley was well known for this, but Diana was that everyone knew as well, and she

was a publicly reviled figure too. Yeah. Okay, good. Good. What was it like in jail for her, I mean, the time that they did? It was hideous because it was like, you know, absolutely Victorian horror conditions, rats and open sewage and, uh, this is all happening during. the blitz. Imagine you're you're in prison and you're being bombed by your best buddies.

And so, you know, so, so yeah, it was, it was truly grim and, you know, they're allowed something like four 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. 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? Three and a half years. Okay. Okay. Was the war over by that point when they got let out? 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

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 hotel. And was there any regret? Because obviously, you know, the war happened. It's terrible. Nazism and fascism has been revealed and all its awful glory. So there must have been like a whole lot of people going, oh, yeah, I sort of, any regrets at all from those two? Oh, no.

Oh, 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 Mithford's and all these books about Diana and Moseley. And nowhere do I see any mention of this. They, in the, around 1950, they started their own publishing imprint called Euphoria on 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. Oh. Yeah. Oh.

Yeah. Oh, it's awful. 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's, she's, you know, was like ridiculously beautiful. It was just completely unfair. 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 Naziism, I think. Even the Brits. Apparently not. Even the British parents. Hey, what about what about the younger one? What about Unity? What's she doing when our older sisters in jail getting fur coats?

Oh my. Oh, well. Okay. Let's back up a little bit. Okay. 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 going to do this if this happened. 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, you know, 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, Sydney 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 Der Sturmer, which was Germany's most vitriolically anti-Semitic newspaper there was. And in fact, even Hitler and Goebbels were like, you know, ixne on the Ujay. Fuck, 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, you know, 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, Sydney, her mother, takes her. to a small island in the Hebrides called Inch Kenneth, where their father has so wisely bought the island in a house there. 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 in Inch Kenneth.

And in 1948, I think it was unity succumbed to meningitis from the infection from the bullet still in her brain. Okay, okay. So that's, it's difficult, isn't it? Because you want to say that's a sad story. But then again, she wrote a horrible article and a horrible paper and sounds like a horrible person. I mean, I think there was just something really wrong with her. I feel sorry 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. She sounds a bit I know that's not a professional diagnosis but she sounds a bit cracked not a professional diagnosis 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 they were terribly worried about unity they got a call finally

on Christmas Eve from Unity who was in a hospital saying I want to come home. How old was she about her? 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. How old was she when she did this, when she ended up in the hospital? Let's see. I think she was about 23 or so. 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 the family. Oh, yeah. They were out of their minds. And at the same time, though, Jessica had run away. Jessica, the communist, had started a running about her. 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 Nowersville. She had a cousin named Esmond Romilly, was Winston Churchill's nephew, who 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 invalated 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. They do this a lot of the Mnithford. They just seem to get crushes from afar. They read about someone. They're just like, yeah, that's the one for me. That's the one for me. And they double down, man.

Do they ever double down? They are the queens of the doubling down. 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. And so they ran away together to Spain to cover the 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. They, you know, there were headlines in the newspapers like Mitford daughter trapped in hut in the Pyrenees, all kinds of speculation. Oh, God. Wow. 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 going to take these refugees to France. But if you're not getting on the boat, we can't do that. Smuts. So they had to get on the boat and go back to France.

Nancy and her then-husband Peter Rod met them at the boat. And Nancy told Jessica, oh, you know, Unity's so jealous. You were on posters, you know, meeting those big posters that the newspapers would have at newspaper stands that would, you know, 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, of the measles because there was a measles outbreak. And she had been told by 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. Sydney 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 connection, 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. Wow. Okay. But they had made friends with people in

who were very influential, the Durs, this couple, he was a lawyer and his wife was an activist. They were from Birmingham, Alabama, and Virginia Dür 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'd 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, who's 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. I know. Oh, my God.

That's amazing. 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 weren't getting screwed over by wildly fluctuating prices. I met this lawyer who was working for the same organization and Bob Truhoft 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 for 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 also got caught up in the Hughack hearings. and oh, there's so much. It really is. How much time have you got?

I'll be back with Mimi after this short break. 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. They knew everyone. Everything they did and said had something to do with every aspect of world history throughout the 20th. So Diana was a debutante alongside of Kick Kennedy, who was Kathleen's Kennedy, who was the sister of John F. Kennedy, and that's 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.

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 Kitt 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. Oh, well, JFK. I mean, if anything, stay still long enough, he'd have a go at it, wouldn't he?

That's my understanding. Right. I mean, and if you're unhappily married to an alcoholic, you know, and you've got an opportunity to be with the leader of the free world, why wouldn't you? Flashy a 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? Pam married Derek Jackson, who I like to refer to as a vigorous bisexual. Oh, I like that. Okay, so not entirely quiet then. No, no. And here's the thing. Derek Jackson's father started the news of the world.

Quietish. Quietish. The heir to this great fortune. And he was also a freaking rocket scientist, a literal rocket scientist. Wow. But he also kind of, had fascist leanings. And he was in the RAF and he would blither this fascist nonsense at them

and, you know, 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 like, you know, been more over to that side of things. But she was very, she was very soft-spoken. And I think she and Unity may have had a kind of sense of humor that was so ineffable that not even there, 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 Truhoft, told me that he met her a couple of times and that she was absolutely hilarious. And she was, you know, she just wanted to stay in the background. She had had polio as a child and had been cruelly 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. Oh, we've all been there.

But she became quite the poultry expert And Deboh late in life said Pam should have her own chicken chat show 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 going to meet one of them

If you're going to go out for 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 And who are you going with? Well, I think Jessica is 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 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 going to deal with Americans. So Jessica would be my choice, first of all. Then 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. Ooh. Oh, 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. Do admit that Mithford sisters and me. And the do admit is they would fight with each other and, you know, they'd try to convince you to come over to their side of the argument of like, I do admit. Oh, I love that. Being the only sister of two brothers,

I could never get my brothers to admit. They would never admit. 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? Well, I have a website, MimiPond.com, and I'm on Instagram at Mimi.com. So I'm posting all the time. I post little videos.

Can't compare to yours, of course, but I've been doing a series called Mitford's in a minute. Amazing. Where I spew out, you know, all these incredible crazy facts about them. Oh, I love that. Right, we'll go and check that out. Thank you so much. You have been spectacular. Well, thanks.

It's been absolutely a pleasure. I could go on. 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 it is. You get your podcasts. Coming up, we have got episodes on the origins of Aphrodite and the truth about mythical women all come in your way. If you want us to explore a subject or if you're just wanting to say hello, then you can email us at betwixt at historyhit.com.

This podcast was edited by Tim Arstall 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.