The Six: The Lives of the Mitford Sisters

A delightful group biography of Diana, Nancy, Jessica, Unity, Pamela and Deborah, in short: The Mitford Sisters. I have read most of Nancy's work in the 70's and recently re-read the Pursuit of Love. It lost nothing of its charm. Being familiar with Nancy's novels and Jessica's ‘fictionalised' memoir Hons and Rebels, makes the reading of Laura Thompson's book a much richer experience. But even newcomers to the subject will find it an interesting portrait of an era and the six sisters' role in it.

Thompson places the girls in their impoverished aristocratic background, paints a portrait of the marriage and parents of the brood – there also was a brother Tom -. She goes onto describing each girl's debutants ball and then devotes the rest of the book to what happened when those girls entered English society, at a time when the world around them slowly, but irreversibly descended into World War II.

Thompson tells their story with verve and objectiveness, never trying to exonerate their choices. The background information the reader needs to navigate the lives of these girls, is seamlessly woven into the story. For her research she interviewed the two then living sisters Diana and Deborah and some of the Mitford sister's children. She makes use of these interviews by incorporating them in the story, together with quotes from the copious correspondence between the sisters. This enlivens the text with gems of Mitford witticisms.

The book makes for compelling reading and I would recommend it to anyone even slightly interested in the Mitfords.

Using the epub version of the book, I was rather disappointed with the index and the notes. The index was a perfect but unlinked back-of-the-book index. The notes had the same problem, they were not linked to the notes at the back of the book and if you forgot to bookmark your page, it was a hassle to get back to the page you were reading.

The audio book is read by Maggie Mash, who has a very pleasant voice. I found some of her impersonations a bit over the top.