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The eldest was a razor-sharp novelist of upper-class manners; the second was loved by John Betjeman; the third was a fascist who married Oswald Mosley; the fourth idolized Hitler and shot herself in the head when Britain declared war on Germany; the fifth was a member of the American Communist Party; the sixth became Duchess of Devonshire.
They were the Mitford sisters: Nancy, Pamela, Diana, Unity, Jessica, and Deborah. Born into country-house privilege in the early years of the 20th century, they became prominent as "bright young things" in the high society of interwar London. Then, as the shadows crept over 1930s Europe, the stark-and very public-differences in their outlooks came to symbolize the political polarities of a dangerous decade.
The intertwined stories of their stylish and scandalous lives-recounted in masterly fashion by Laura Thompson-hold up a revelatory mirror to upper-class English life before and after WWII.
The Six was previously published as
Take Six Girls.
About the author
LAURA THOMPSON is a writer and freelance journalist. She won the Somerset Maugham award for her first book,
The Dogs, and is also the author of the critically acclaimed biography of Nancy Mitford,
Life in a Cold Climate,
Agatha Christie: An English Mystery (2007), and
A Different Class of Murder: the Story of Lord Lucan(2014)
