The Mitford family is an aristocratic English family whose principal line had its seats at Mitford, Northumberland. Several heads of the family served as High Sheriff of Northumberland. A junior line, with seats at Newton Park, Northumberland, and Exbury House, Hampshire, descends via the historian William Mitford (1744–1827) and were twice elevated to the British peerage, in 1802 and 1902, under the title Baron Redesdale.
Nancy Freeman-Mitford was an English novelist, biographer, and journalist. The eldest of the Mitford sisters, she was regarded as one of the "bright young things" on the London social scene in the inter-war period. She wrote several novels about upper-class life in England and France, and is considered a sharp and often provocative wit. She also has a reputation as a writer of popular historical biographies.
Jessica Lucy "Decca" Treuhaft was an English author, one of the six aristocratic Mitford sisters noted for their sharply conflicting politics.
Unity Valkyrie Freeman-Mitford was a British socialite and member of the Mitford family known for her relationship with Adolf Hitler. Both in the United Kingdom and Germany, she was a prominent supporter of national socialism, and belonged to Hitler's inner circle of friends. When the United Kingdom and Germany went to war, she attempted suicide in Munich by shooting herself in the head. She survived but was badly injured. She was allowed safe passage back to England but never recovered from the extensive brain damage. She later died from meningitis related to the wound.
Deborah Vivien Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire,, was an English aristocrat, writer, memoirist, and socialite. She was the youngest and last surviving of the six Mitford sisters, who were prominent members of British society in the 1930s and 1940s.
Diana, Lady Mosley, known as Diana Guinness between 1929 and 1936, was a British aristocrat, writer, editor and fascist sympathiser. She was one of the Mitford sisters and the wife of Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists.
The British Union of Fascists (BUF) was a British fascist political party formed in 1932 by Oswald Mosley. Mosley changed its name to the British Union of Fascists and National Socialists in 1936 and, in 1937, to the British Union. In 1939, following the start of the Second World War, the party was proscribed by the British government and in 1940 it was disbanded.
Swastika is a small community founded around a mine site in Northern Ontario, Canada in 1908. Today it is within the municipal boundaries of Kirkland Lake, Ontario. It has frequently been noted on lists of unusual place names.
Esmond Marcus David Romilly was a British socialist, anti-fascist, and journalist, who was in turn a schoolboy rebel, a veteran with the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War and, following the outbreak of the Second World War, an observer with the Royal Canadian Air Force. He is perhaps best remembered for his teenage elopement with his distant cousin Jessica Mitford, the second youngest of the Mitford sisters.
Theodore Philip Toynbee was a British writer and communist. He wrote experimental novels, and distinctive verse novels, one of which was an epic called Pantaloon, a work in several volumes, only some of which are published. He also wrote memoirs of the 1930s, and reviews and literary criticism, the latter mainly via his employment with The Observer newspaper.
Inch Kenneth is a small grassy island off the west coast of the Isle of Mull, in Scotland. It is at the entrance of Loch na Keal, to the south of Ulva. It is part of the Loch na Keal National Scenic Area, one of 40 in Scotland. It is within the parish of Kilfinichen and Kilvickeon, in Argyll and Bute.
Thomas Gibson Bowles was a British politician and publisher. He founded the magazines The Lady and Vanity Fair, and became a Member of Parliament in 1892. He was also the maternal grandfather of the Mitford sisters.
David Bertram Ogilvy Freeman-Mitford, 2nd Baron Redesdale,, was a British peer, soldier, and landowner. He was the father of the Mitford sisters, in whose various novels and memoirs he is depicted.
Hitler's British Girl is a Channel 4 documentary film about British Nazi sympathiser Unity Mitford and her relationship with Adolf Hitler. The film was made by following an investigation by journalist Martin Bright which revealed that she may have secretly given birth to Hitler's child.
Asthall Manor is a gabled Jacobean Cotswold manor house in Asthall, Oxfordshire. It was built in about 1620 and altered and enlarged in about 1916. The house is Grade II listed on the National Heritage List for England.
Major Thomas David Freeman-Mitford was the only son of the 2nd Baron Redesdale and brother of the Mitford Sisters.
The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters is a 2007 book of selected letters between the Mitford sisters. It contains letters exchanged between Nancy Mitford, Pamela Mitford, Diana Mitford, Unity Mitford, Jessica Mitford and Deborah Mitford between 1925 and 2003. The book was edited by Diana Mitford's daughter-in-law, Charlotte Mosley. An estimated five percent of letters between the six sisters were included in the 834-page publication. The book was published by HarperCollins.
Decca: The Letters of Jessica Mitford is 2006 collection of letters by Jessica Mitford. The book was edited by Peter Y. Sussman and the publisher is Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
Wigs on the Green is a 1935 satirical novel by Nancy Mitford. A roman à clef, it is notable for lampooning British fascism, specifically political enthusiasms of Mitford's sisters Unity Mitford and Diana Mosley.
James Forman Jr. is an American legal scholar currently on leave from serving as the J. Skelly Wright Professor of Law at Yale Law School. He is the author of Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America, which won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, and a co-founder of the Maya Angelou School in Washington, D.C.
