The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family | 
 enlarge | Author: Mary S. Lovell
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Category: Book
List Price: $18.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  40 reviews
Sales Rank: 56308
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 640
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.5 x 1.3
ISBN: 0393324141
Dewey Decimal Number: 920.720941
EAN: 9780393324143
ASIN: 0393324141
Publication Date: March 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Book Description
"The Mitford girls were probably the most spectacular sister act of the twentieth century."—Vogue This is the story of a close, loving family splintered by the violent ideologies of Europe between the wars. Jessica was a Communist; Debo became the Duchess of Devonshire; Nancy was one of the best-selling novelists of her day; the ethereally beautiful Diana was the most hated woman in England; and Unity Valkyrie, born in Swastika, Alaska, would become obsessed with Adolf Hitler. 24 b/w photographs.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 35 more reviews...
 The Mitfords make Paris & Lindsay look like upstanding citizens. February 28, 2008
Just read this for my book club and OY, OY, OY, did I ever hate it. I really did not find any of the sisters to be sympathetic. They were so spoiled and out of touch with reality. Furthermore, they were so mean to each other. I also had a hard time keeping them straight with all of their stupid nicknames. The biographer's apologetic yet pedantic tone bugged the hell out of me. Lady, we all get the peerage system and the nanny system. Oh and BTW, hobnobbing with Nazis does not make one fascinating; it makes one despicable, even if you are the most classically beautiful woman to grace the world. How bout another OY for good measure... OY!
 just a little biased January 22, 2008
A biography clearly more sympathetic with some sisters more than others, but overall a comprehensive look at the sisters and the time and world in which they lived.
You've read this before December 19, 2007
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
If you've read even one book about the Mitford family, you've read this book before. It relies heavily on Jessica Mitford's HONS AND REBELS, and/or THE HOUSE OF MITFORD, by Jonathan & Catherine Guinness, and Nancy Mitford's comedies. The author merely borrows fact (or fictionalized fact) and conclusions from all other authors, and sets them forth yet again, in this waste-of-time effort.
I wanted NEW insights into this family, and all I found was repetition. While I appreciate a biographer who allows me to draw my own conclusions, there should be times when an author's feelings come forward about the subject(s). We should have some sense of where the author stands, in other words. In this case, I think the author was too concerned about not causing offense to the Duchess of Devonshire and Lady Mosley, who gave her assistance. There is absolutely nothing fresh about this multi-biography.
Very disappointed in this, and very glad I only borrowed it from the library.
Six of One, Half a Dozen of the Other April 2, 2007
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
Mary Lovell's interesting book on the Mitford sisters (and on Tom, the ill-fated brother) is a guilty pleasure indeed. Lovell has a completely new take on things that urges us to find Diana Mosley a brave 20th century heroine who fought for what she believed in and whose imprisonment during the first part of World War II was a shocking act of injustice comparable to the internment of Japanese-Americans in prison camps in the USA. Revisionist much? Yes, indeed, and that's part of its fascination. Lovell seems most determined to set on its ear David Pryce-Jones' biography of Unity Mitford. Unity, the tortured British Nazi who set her cap on the biggest Nazi of them all, Adolf Hitler, here emerges as the funniest and cutest of all the funny and cute sisters. Yes, Lovell admits, she should not have laughed when Hitler boasted of forcing a party of Jews to cut a sward of German lawn with their teeth alone--that was cruel and unMitfordlike. But outside of that, did Unity really do any actual harm? Lovell says no.
Meanwhile there is a continual hum of approval for Debo, Duchess of Devonshire, and her substantial work keeping together her husband's ancestral estates. For Lovell, preservation work of a zillionaire's estate merits the highest commendation.
Decca (Jessica) Mitford, comes off the worst, and her elopement with Spanish Civil War buff, and her first cousin, Edmond Romilly, shows how unfeeling she was to her mother and father, and she stayed a Communist for years and years (until 1958) when she should have abjured the party years ago. Well, she should never have joined up in the first place.
Many reviewers praise Lovell's evenhandedness and lack of judgement, but I haven't seen a trace of an even hand. In one telling passage Decca is stuck overnight in an Alabama church with Martin Luther King Jr, while Ku Klux Klan and 1,500 other white protestors surround the church with tear gas. "The uproar," Lovell writes, "had been caused by the surprise appearance at the event of the Freedom Fighters, a sort of flying squad pf black youths on motorcycles, who were much feared by whites in the Southern states." Oh so that's why it happened, eh? Why not just say, "The uproar has been caused by racism"? That's shorter and much more on point than your ridiculous "Freedom Fighter" excuse.
Debo and Pam aren't in the book that much, and Pam is like the invisible woman. When she goes gay ("she's become a you-know-what-bian," Decca writes to her husband) Lovell makes absolutely no comment, though she analyzes every little variation on the Mitfords' uncountable family nicknames. It's obviously not important to her, but it leaves the reader thinking, well, Pam is really a bore, which is terribly unfair to Pam (she whom her sisters called, "Woman," for she was the best of all of them) who deserves a biography of her own, one in which the biographer didn't wish her away with a "well done, Pam" from time to time.
That said, the book is like a big box of delicious candy and you just can't stop eating it till all of the sisters die (but one) and we are left contemplating the terrible, wonderful legacy of an aristocracy who could do whatever they pleased and managed to get it wrong 95 per cent of the time, empty candy wrappers scattering in the breeze. I loved it, pretty much.
Interesting Read August 27, 2006
6 out of 9 found this review helpful
I loved the way the author achieved combining the personal lives of the Mitford family and the history of the times. In hindsight, it's easy to say that Diana and Unity should have been smarter about Hitler. But it was a time when he almost had a whole continent enamored with his achievement shown by the economic advances of Germany. No one in the free world acted on the atrocities that happened on his watch because these acts were incomprehensible at the time..so how could the two Mitford sisters, Diana and Unity even anticipate the horrors that he was finally associated with. They were attracted to the glamour, the power, the popularity and intelligence they believed Hitler had. Were they wrong?? Yes...but at the time it seemed like he was the rescuer, and I thought that Lovell was very fair portraying the situation..never revealing her feelings about this. It was a beautifully researched book which presented the sisters and family as very real..even Tom, who was absent during the time doinng his wartime duty, but portrayed as a very influentuial and loved character in the family. I thoroughly enjoyed this book..I became very attached to all of the sisters for different reasons..and I loved Sydney and thought she imparted a great sense of confidence for her girls to develop their independent selves..
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