It would have been satisfyingly neat if the 2007 publication of Letters Between Six Sisters, in which Charlotte Mosley gathered the best of the correspondence between the Mitford girls, had been the Mitford industry's last glorious gasp. What a blissful high on which to leave the fascist, the communist, the novelist, the duchess, the Nazi and the "you-know-what-bian" (as Jessica described poor old Pamela, a farmer and lesbian).
But no. Gibson Square, the independent publisher that, a few years ago, reissued Harold Acton's portrait of Nancy Mitford, has attempted to squeeze one more golden egg out of the goose with a collection by Diana Mosley (the fascist). As a small outfit in a world of conglomerates, I suppose it cannot be blamed for leaping tardily aboard a lucrative bandwagon.
Nevertheless, a more pointless and badly edited collection it is hard to imagine. If a book is not going to deal with the problem of Diana's politics, then at least let it give us a little of her wit. The Pursuit of Laughter does neither and thus the Diana who emerges from its pages is, unforgivably, nothing more than a snobbish dullard with a startling line in rhetorical leaps.
This will please the legions of Mitford-despisers, who bluster that we fans too easily forgive them their sins on account of their rare charm. But it didn't please me. The feeling of being bored to sobs by a book by a Mitford is one that I sincerely hope never to experience again.
The book, edited by Martin Rynja, the owner of Gibson Square, can be divided roughly into three: there are Diana's book reviews; some diary entries (from 1953 to 1959, hardly the most interesting period of her life); and a trio of portraits, reprinted from her 1985 book Loved Ones, of her famous friends (Evelyn Waugh, Violet Hammersley, Lytton Strachey).
In an editor's note, Rynja writes that he first met Diana in 2001, when he asked her to write the new introduction to Acton's book; he was invited to lunch with her in Paris, an event he approached with some trepidation "on account of her at times strident political views". However, he was instantly charmed - oh, those limpid eyes; oh, that dove-grey dress - and enjoyed "one of the most delightful afternoons I have ever had", a fact that makes it all the more strange that he should have done her such a disservice here.
To take the smallest of my irritations first: why, in the diary section, are no dates provided above the entries? And why include so many reviews of weighty books in which it is patently obvious that Diana was out of her depth? It is very enjoyable to read her on, say, Vita Sackville-West's In Your Garden. She begins her review by calling Vita a "ferocious sapphist" and concludes by asking: "Is she reliable?... I planted [climbing roses up fruit trees] as advised and within two years all four trees had fallen... an orchard disaster."
But Diana on Adventures on the Freedom Road: The French Intellectuals in the 20th Century by Bernard-Henri Lévy? Non merci. "Not many English writers live in London," she asserts blithely, comparing it with the French capital. "They prefer the country." The best that can be said of statements like this is that they remind one of Diana's queenly fondness for generalisation and gloss, a Teflon quality that proved useful when it came to her politics.
Ah, yes. Her politics. You will find traces of them here, but nothing too upsettingly full-on. A section of reviews of books about Germany is coyly entitled A Talent to Annoy, which pretty much sets the tone. In 1936, Diana secretly married Oswald Mosley in Goebbels's drawing room in Berlin, with Hitler as the guest of honour. Goebbels and Hitler are mentioned often in her book reviews, but never critically. Goebbels, for instance, was "brilliant" and "good company". After the war, Diana did not renounce her former sympathies - though the Holocaust, she eventually admitted, was an unfortunate and nasty thing - and her tendency here is to nitpick with historians, apparently regarding their work as the mere propaganda of the victors.
The ticking-off she dishes out to Hugh Trevor-Roper for describing Goebbels's villa as palatial - "It was comfortable, but by no effort of the imagination could it have been called luxurious... it was not as palatial as Number 11 Downing Street" - would be laugh-out-loud funny were it not for the fact that it is Goebbels for whom she is so pedantically trying to stick up, Goebbels, the burner of books, whom she praises for having been well read.
During the war, Diana and Oswald were imprisoned without trial in Holloway prison - their fascist sympathies made them a "public danger" - and you will often find her tackling prison life, if somewhat predictably. I can't entirely agree with her about the principle of her own detention, but you have to admire the lack of self-pity with which she otherwise describes her imprisonment, even the fact that, when she was carted off, her youngest son was just 11 weeks old.
She was no Nancy or Jessica, but Diana could write, as anyone who has read her memoir, A Life of Contrasts, will know. Unfortunately, when Rynja includes an extract of that book here, it only serves to emphasise the infinitely lower quality of almost everything else. What to do, then, should you have been given a copy for Christmas? My advice is that you pull it apart, like a clementine, discarding any segments that look too dry. What you will be left with, though tiny, is some decent nosy parker stuff about the Duchess of Windsor ("At my last visit, she never spoke, but lay staring like the Greek mask of tragedy") and Evelyn Waugh.
Also, a few good photographs. Diana was a noted beauty, her photograph always featuring the same calm - blank? - stare. "She was getting like that in real life, too," said her sister Jessica acidly. And I must admit that you do look at the high forehead and the heavy eyelids and you wonder: how did she keep certain dark thoughts from rushing in?
