Last year, our deep-dive into the wild world of the Mitford sisters ruffled a few aristocratic feathers and sparked a torrent of listener emails. The question that echoed through every message was simple, but loaded: Were they all bad?
In this follow-up episode, Keith peels back the layers of myth, gossip, and public outrage to look at the whole Mitford clan, this time, including the much-overlooked brother, Tom, and their delightfully eccentric parents. We venture beyond the headlines about fascists and communists, parties and poultry, to ask if it’s possible for a family to be so infamous and yet, in flashes, strangely sympathetic.
Listeners will meet each sibling in turn, Nancy with her razor wit, Pamela the forgotten foodie, Diana the dazzling fascist, Unity the Nazi’s English rose, Jessica the runaway Red, Deborah the duchess, and poor Tom, lost to war and obscurity. And, looming over them all, Lord and Lady Redesdale: comic, tragic, utterly baffled by the children they unleashed on the 20th century.
This is not just a roll-call of scandal, but a nuanced portrait of a family who embodied the contradictions of their time. Were they monsters, victims, or simply very English oddities? Join us for a candid, entertaining, and occasionally exasperated exploration of the Mitfords, one that might just leave you questioning what it means to be “bad” in the first place.
For books written and published by Keith Hocton
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