‘A sensational saga’ Mail on Sunday
‘A cracking read’ Lynn Barber, Observer
‘Engrossing from beginning to end’ Vogue
‘Fascinating, the way all great family stories are fascinating’ New York Times Book Review
Even if the six daughters, born between 1904 and 1920, of the charming, eccentric David, Lord Redesdale and his wife Sydney had been quite ordinary women, the span of their lives – encompassing the most traumatic century in Britain’s history – and the status to which they were born, would have made their story a fascinating one. But Nancy, Pamela, Diana, Unity, Decca and Debo, ‘the mad, mad Mitfords’, were far from ordinary.
‘A cracking read’ Lynn Barber, Observer
‘Engrossing from beginning to end’ Vogue
‘Fascinating, the way all great family stories are fascinating’ New York Times Book Review
Even if the six daughters, born between 1904 and 1920, of the charming, eccentric David, Lord Redesdale and his wife Sydney had been quite ordinary women, the span of their lives – encompassing the most traumatic century in Britain’s history – and the status to which they were born, would have made their story a fascinating one. But Nancy, Pamela, Diana, Unity, Decca and Debo, ‘the mad, mad Mitfords’, were far from ordinary.
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Reviews
The whole story is brought together, expertly and entertainingly, by Mary S. Lovell... as a curtain raiser, both of the Mitford Girls and those bright young things around them, it is second to none
A dazzling cast of characters... A rivetingly intimate history lesson
By drawing on new sources, Lovell presents a fresh version of the Mitford story... Lovell's book proves that there was something extraordinary about those six well-bred girls from Gloucestershire
Lovell's never-a-dull moment biography animates usually underrated players such as the girls' mother, Lady Redesdale, who once lectured Hitler on the importance of wholemeal bread, and Pam, the second eldest and 'most rural' Mitford Girl, who had a sky-blue Aga to match her eyes
Fascinating, the way all great family stories are fascinating
In the first book devoted to the whole tribe, Lovell does sterling work in revising our Nancy-made image of her parents in her novel The Pursuit of Love
A book that can be heartily recommended
These women were so powerfully, inescapably, passionately alive... The book remains engrossing from beginning to end
They were quite a handful these sisters. But they were always great fun. And so is Lovell's rollicking book
This is an excellent book - calm, dispassionate and respectful of its subjects
A sensational saga
Vivid social history that reads like a novel... An impressive group biography
The remarkable Mitfords have inspired dozens of books but this may well be the best... Enjoyably anecdotal, it is engagingly written while displaying a rare and commendable restraint
I enjoyed The Mitford Girls enormously... Lovell has had access to material which was not previously available... she paints a somewhat more human, in fact more tragic, picture of the Mitfords than previous biographers
Rises with aplomb to the challenges of a group biography, deftly weaving together the narrative threads of six at times radically disparate lives, to create a fascinating account of a fascinating family