The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family by Mary S. Lovell

In early February I reviewed Laura Thompson's biography of the Mitford sisters, The Six: The Lives of the Mitford Sisters. I had mixed feelings about that book, although I learned a lot about the whole family, including the parents and their brother, Tom. But I felt like I could benefit from another look at the subject. 

To briefly describe the Mitford family:

The parents were David Freeman-Mitford, 2nd Baron Redesdale and his wife Sidney, née Bowles. The daughters were Nancy (b. 1904), Pam (b. 1907), Diana (b. 1910), Unity (b. 1914), Jessica (b. 1917), and Deborah (b. 1920). Tom, the only son, was born in 1909, between Pam and Diana. Some of the sisters were very notorious. Diana was a fascist and married Oswald Mosley, who founded and led the British Union of Fascists. Unity was a huge fan of Hitler and visited Germany regularly prior to World War II. Nancy was a successful author of both fiction and nonfiction books. Jessica eloped with Esmond Romilly, a nephew of Winston Churchill, became a Communist, and moved to the US; she was also a successful author, of memoirs and nonfiction. Pam had the most normal life, preferring rural life. Deborah was the youngest, apolitical, and married to Andrew Cavendish, who became the 11th Duke of Devonshire.

In Thompson's book, she spent a lot more time on Diana, Unity, and Nancy. I wanted to know more about Jessica, Pam and Deborah. So I started reading Nancy S. Lovell's biography, The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family, published in 2001. It was over 500 pages long and had much more information about all members of the family. Only Tom Mitford got less coverage in Lovell's book; he was killed in action during the Second World War. 

I think the only sister that got less coverage in the Lovell book was Nancy. There was less information about her fiction books, and more about her nonfiction books, which were also very successful. There was also more detail on her relationship with Gaston Palewski, a close associate of Charles de Gaulle during and after World War II.

I was very interested in knowing more about Jessica Mitford, and Lovell's biography covered her life in great detail. Both books were somewhat confusing because they often referred to the sisters by their nicknames. Especially in Lovell's biography, Jessica was referred to as Decca and Deborah was called Debo. But I got used to that after a few chapters. There was also more information about the girls' childhood, which translates into more about the parents early in their marriage.

Several reviews, including the review at The New York Times, are critical of Lovell for apologizing for the attitudes of Unity and Diana towards fascism and Hitler. I did not take her statements that way, but clearly that is the impression conveyed to many readers.

I enjoyed this book a lot, although it took me a long time to read. There were lots of footnotes to either explain or elucidate a passage or cite the source of the information and I did spend a lot of time going back and forth between text and footnotes. 

I was attracted to the story of the sisters partly because they lived through the years leading up to and including World War II. I learned much new information about the UK and other European countries during those years. 

I first learned about the Mitford sisters at Moira's Clothes in Books blog. I recommend this post for more about the sisters and some of the books they wrote.

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Publisher:   W. W. Norton & Company, 2003 (orig. publ. 2001)
Length:       529 pages
Format:      Trade paperback
Setting:      UK, US, France.
Genre:        Biography
Source:       I purchased this book in 2020.

The Six: The Lives of the Mitford Sisters

 

This biography by Laura Thompson tells about the lives of the Mitford family with a primary focus on the six daughters. The parents were David Freeman-Mitford, 2nd Baron Redesdale and his wife Sidney, née Bowles. The daughters were Nancy (b. 1904), Pam (b. 1907), Diana (b. 1910), Unity (b. 1914), Jessica (b. 1917), and Deborah (b. 1920). Tom, the only son, was born in 1909, between Pam and Diana. 

I don't know when I became aware of the Mitford girls, but it was since I started blogging. See this post on the Mitford sisters at Clothes in Books, where Moira also mentions this book. But even when I started the book I did not know much more than that Nancy was an author, Diana married Oswald Mosley, and Unity was obsessed with Hitler.

I was pulled in two directions while reading this book. Laura Thompson's writing is very entertaining and I learned a lot from the book. But towards the end I thought that something was missing and I was not satisfied. 

I will start with the good. To begin with, it was a pleasure reading this book. The first part was fairly straightforward and I was glad the author began with the background of the parents and covered the older children's childhood and David's part in World War I. I definitely came away from the book knowing much more about the Mitfords than I knew before, and also picked up more about events and attitudes in the UK before and during World War II. I had been aware that there was support for Germany and Hitler in that country prior to the war, but did not realize quite how much. 

But in later parts of the book, I noticed Laura Thompson included too much of her own opinions and biases towards the sisters, which affected her coverage of the family.  She pulled a lot from Nancy's novels, which were based on the family but not a true picture of what actually happened. The impression I got from reading this biography were that all of Nancy's novels were based on members of the family, but I am not sure if that is true. She exaggerated and embellished a lot in the fictional portrayals of members of the family. Nancy's novels were referred to so frequently that sometimes it was not clear whether Thompson was writing about the real person or the depiction of that person in a novel. 

A lot of the book is more about the myths about the Mitfords that sprang from Nancy's fiction books based on the family. Since I was looking for facts, that did not work well for me. I suspect that the enjoyment of this book could depend on how much familiarity the reader already has with the Mitfords and that part of history. 

I felt like Laura Thompson's biography emphasized Nancy, Diana, and Unity and did not include much about Pam, Jessica, or Deborah. She also bounced around a lot between the sisters and went back and forth in time which got very confusing. 

To summarize, Laura Thompson's writing is very readable and entertaining, but I felt I missed a lot of the story. I wanted more. I liked this book as much for what I learned about events and behavior in the UK leading up to and during the war as for the story of the sisters. 

I started reading The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family by Mary S. Lovell a few days after I finished The Six. I wanted to see how that biographer approached the story, whether it has more information than the other book, and how the two differed in their take on the sisters. That book was first published in 2001, 14 years earlier than Thompson's biography, and is 200 pages longer.

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Publisher:   Picador, 2017 (orig. publ. 2015)
Length:       388 pages
Format:      Trade paperback
Setting:      UK
Genre:       Nonfiction, Biography
Source:      Purchased in 2022.

Agatha Christie: A Mysterious Life: Laura Thompson

 

I started out loving this biography of Agatha Christie. It is very readable, and the first chapter about her childhood was charming. I did not know that much about Christie's life at all, especially before her marriage to Max Mallowan, so I learned a lot from the earlier chapters about her courtship and marriage to Archie Christie. The author often mentioned Christie's writing and specific mysteries, and I enjoyed that part a lot. 

However, the author depended too much on quotes from Christie's fiction books (mostly the non-mystery books) to demonstrate and support statements about Agatha's relationships with other people, and especially Archie Christie. 

The chapter about the mystery of Christie's disappearance went on too long for me, and since not much is definitely known about that event, she was making guesses on a good bit of it. On the other hand this was the first I had read on the subject, and she had to handle that period of time in some way, so that is a minor complaint. There were interesting facts (and opinions?) about how the investigation was handled.

Overall, I learned a lot of things about Agatha Christie's life that I have never known, and I appreciated learning about what was going on in her life when she wrote some of her books, especially the earlier ones.  Even with the few quibbles I had regarding this book, I found that it was interesting, informative, and well worth reading.

I would like to read other books on Christie's life. I had forgotten that she wrote an autobiography and I will be looking for a copy of that. I will also be seeking out Come, Tell Me How You Live by Christie, which focuses on her experiences on archaeological trips with Max Mallowan, her second husband. I have a copy of Robert Barnard's A Talent to Deceive: An Appreciation of Agatha Christie, which is more about her books and her writing, but does include some about her life. I would appreciate other recommendations. 

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Publisher:  Pegasus Books, 2018 (orig. publ. 2007)
Length:      485 pages
Format:      Hardcover
Setting:      UK, mostly
Genre:       Biography
Source:      I purchased my copy in June 2022.