Laura Thompson. (2016). The Six: The Lives of the Mitford Sisters. St. Martin's Publishing Group.

Laura Thompson. 2016. The Six: The Lives of the Mitford Sisters. St. Martin's Publishing Group.

Laura Thompson, The Six: The Lives of the Mitford Sisters. St. Martin's Publishing Group, 2016.

Laura Thompson. The Six: The Lives of the Mitford Sisters. St. Martin's Publishing Group, 2016.

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1. • value: Literary Biography
2. • value: British Army
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26. • value: diana mitford
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28. • value: pamela mitford
29. • value: the mitford girls
30. • value: unity mitford
31. • value: bright young people
32. • value: british aristocrats
33. • value: asthall manor
34. • value: british biographies
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1. • role: Author
   • fileAs: Thompson, Laura
   • bioText: Laura Thompson is the author of several critically acclaimed works of non-fiction. Her first book The Dogs: A Personal History of Greyhound Racing won the Somerset Maugham Award. Rex V. Edith Thompson: A Tale of Two Murders was shortlisted for a CWA Dagger Award. She has written biographies of Nancy Mitford and Agatha Christie, A Different Class of Murder about the Lord Lucan scandal, The Last Landlady about her grandmother, and the New York Times-bestselling Take Six Girls: The Lives of the Mitford Sisters.
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The Six

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AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
"Riveting. The Six captures all the wayward magnetism and levity that have enchanted countless writers without neglecting the tragic darkness of many of the sisters' life choices and the savage sociopolitical currents that fueled them." – Tina Brown, The New York Times Book Review
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.

reviews

1. • premium: False
   • source: The Boston Globe
   • content: "Lively, gossipy, and at times quite moving"
2. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     July 25, 2016
     English writer Thompson (A Different Class of Murder) reveals how the six “posh-feral” Mitford sisters (the oldest of whom was born in 1904) became British cultural touchstones through their unabashed devotion to their respective causes—including fascism, Communism, and Elvis Presley—allowing them to embody the breadth of 20th-century conflicts within one remarkable aristocratic family. Thompson astutely compares wry contemporary assessments and countless often-brutal newspaper articles on the Mitford daughters to self-sufficient Nancy’s more benign fictional version and expat Jessica’s heavily embellished tell-all. With a reliance on sometimes-intrusive amateur psychology and an initially scattered chronology, this book reads more like an examination of personalities and sibling interplay than a traditional narrative; Pam’s penchant for the rural life means that she barely registers, but the obsessive Unity and heedless Diana leap off the page. Deborah, the most conventional, remained firmly of the upper class, becoming the Duchess of Devonshire. Thompson proves her case that the fearless siblings helped shape one another, sometimes through encouragement, but also through sharp barbs and betrayal, leading to extremism in an already highly politicized era. Non-British readers may take longer to understand the sisters’ lasting appeal, but Thompson successfully shows how this group of six captured the zeitgeist by being utterly committed and completely “shame-free.” B&w photos.

3. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     Starred review from July 1, 2016
     A fresh look at six outrageous sisters.There has been no lack of attention to the notorious Mitford sisters, including biographies of Unity Valkyrie Mitford, who, scandalously, adored Hitler; Diana, who married the outspoken fascist Sir Oswald Mosley; and writer Nancy, the subject of Life in a Cold Climate (2003) by Somerset Maugham Award winner Thompson herself (A Different Class of Murder: The Story of Lord Lucan, 2014, etc.). Added to those are family memoirs, collections of letters, and a previous group biography, Mary S. Lovell's The Mitford Girls (2001). Yet for readers yearning for another take on the glamorous sisters' "posh past," Thompson's smart, jaunty, and wittily entertaining book will amply fill their desire. Steeped in Mitford lore and mythmaking, the book offers sharply drawn portraits of each woman, teases out the complexities of their fraught, competitive relationships with one another, and sets their lives within the context of a radically changing world. "These girls are prize exhibits in a Museum of Englishness," admits the author, but she shows how they were much more. Born between 1904 and 1920, the sisters grew up imbibing the etiquette of debutante balls and the personal consequences of global upheaval; their friends were the fey Bright Young Things, "sublimely clever aesthetes"; their enemies were legion. "Snobbery, shallowness, stupidity, adultery, unpalatability--the Mitfords were accused of all these things and rode out every criticism," Thompson writes admiringly. They fervently believed they were exceptional, even Jessica, who rebelled vehemently against the family's politics. Unity never married, and others chose startlingly unsuitable mates: Diana left her adoring, hugely wealthy, but unfortunately dull husband for the rake Mosley; and Pamela married opinionated, philandering bores; Jessica ran off with a communist, with whom she lived in poverty. Deborah, though, made a more suitable match, with an eminent duke who owned assorted castles. Thompson has fallen under the spell of the breathtakingly beautiful (as she repeatedly insists), seductive Diana, but otherwise, her cleareyed view of the sisters' strengths and foibles makes this gossipy story a delight.

     COPYRIGHT(2016) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

4. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     September 1, 2016
     

     What journalist Thompson presents here is a commentary on the once-famous Mitford family rather than an informative narrative biography. These six daughters of British aristocrats (Nancy, Pamela, Diana, Unity, Jessica, and Deborah), in the public eye during the 1930s and 1940s, responded differently and sometimes scandalously to the explosive political passions of the time. Diana left her husband to become the mistress and then wife of Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists, while Unity developed such an obsession with Adolf Hitler that she joined his inner circle. Pamela also married a fascist sympathizer, while Jessica eloped with communist Esmond Romilly, fought in the Spanish Civil War, and assumed the role of muckraker. Writer Nancy is perhaps best known, while youngest daughter Deborah lived quietly as a duchess. Thompson documents the pro-German leanings of the British upper class and how wartime divided this clan and countless others. Family dynamics and the competitive, combative relationships among the sisters explain the choices each made. Based primarily on published materials and providing minor historical context, this analysis juxtaposes the Mitfords' story against the backdrop of novels such as daughter Nancy's The Pursuit of Love. VERDICT For general readers well acquainted with English politics and literature of the first half of the 20th century.--Marie M. Mullaney, Caldwell Coll., NJ

     Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

5. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     August 1, 2016
     Statistical odds are against six out of seven children in one family being of the same gender, but Mother Nature met her match in the redoubtable Mitford family, specifically the six daughters of Lord and Lady Redesdale, born between 1904 and 1920. Obviously, at the time of the sisters' advent into adulthood, social expectations would ordinarily envision them as becoming quiet mothers and wives. But Thompson summarizes their endeavors this way: writer, countrywoman, Fascist, Nazi, Communist, and duchess. The author does a remarkable job of isolating the sisters' individualism, defining in fluid, sensitive, and authoritative language their individual distinctions, while at the same time keeping a sharp but understanding eye on the bigger picture: that the backdrop of their lives together and individually was the changing social and political landscape Britain was experiencing at the time. Looking as they did striking, in other words, the Mitford girls were never going to be ignored. Being what they were, they did not want to be. Appreciators of biography and social history will find much to engage their interest here.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

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AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
"Riveting. The Six captures all the wayward magnetism and levity that have enchanted countless writers without neglecting the tragic darkness of many of the sisters' life choices and the savage sociopolitical currents that fueled them." – Tina Brown, The New York Times Book Review
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...

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