The Mitford Girls: The Biography of an Extraordinary Family | 
pickAnother readable but biased book about the Mitford sisters. Again, everything Diana says and does is excused because of her beauty while Jessica is disparaged because she was a Communist. Mocking remarks about the death of Jessica‘s baby are even excused because after all her husband had been known to play some horrible pranks; whereas, we are expected to feel sorry for Diana when she‘s taken to to prison before her healthy baby is weaned.🙄
KathyWheeler Also, the book is titled The Sisters, but we see very little of Nancy, Pam, and Debo even though Nancy was a well-known writer. It‘s mostly about Unity, Diana, and Jessica. Unity‘s pro-Nazi attitude is discussed but mainly in regard to her stalking of and her eventual relationship with Hitler. A lot of it is, “Oh, poor Unity! She only wanted peace between the two countries she loved.” Jessica‘s declarations of her unhappy childhood are dismissed. 2y
KathyWheeler And they are dismissed because everyone else said she seemed so happy. I would think the fact that she established a runaway fund as a child is pretty indicative that not all was wine and roses. 2y
KathyWheeler The author goes out of her way to say that Diana‘s extraordinary beauty is just not captured well by photographs. I would have to agree, as to me, looking at the pictures, the extraordinarily beautiful one is Debo. But I don‘t understand this obsession with Diana‘s beauty and using it to excuse everything. Maybe because Diana was still alive when this book was written, and she allowed access to family papers and other things? 2y
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KathyWheeler Last comment. Much is made of the horrible conditions that Diana lived under in Holloway prison with very little acknowledgment that she was not the only one. Yes, conditions should have been improved, but for everyone, not just Diana. She had people interceding for her and making her life a little easier, including Churchill; most other prisoners had no one. 2y
rubyslippersreads Diana wrote a memoir about her friend Wallis Simpson. Birds of a feather … 😏 2y
KathyWheeler @rubyslippersreads The first book I read about the Mitfords,The Six, didn‘t mention the book about Wallis Simpson, but this one did. The author also stated that there was never any proof that the Duke of Windsor supported Hitler, but I thought that was pretty well known. 2y
KathyWheeler Very last comment. 😄. I‘ve been thinking about this. All of the pictures on the cover are of the sisters as adults, except the one of Jessica in the top right. The picture used is the one of her as a pouting child even though there are many pictures of her as an adult. It might not mean anything, but it‘s interesting. (edited) 2y
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so-so
