Take Six Girls: The Lives of the Mitford Sisters - Laura Thompson
Take Six Girls: The Lives of the Mitford Sisters - Laura Thompson
Non-Fiction
Pages: 480
This biography isn't quite like any I've ever read before. For a start, tackling six lives in one book would be challenge enough - but when those six are the Mitford sisters, who somehow seem to simultaneously embody and transcend the tumultuous years they lived in, the challenge is so much more daunting. And yet it would almost be dishonest to attempt a biography of just one sister alone (assuming, of course, you could pick one of greater interest than all of the rest - when you have a best-selling author, a radical socialist, a fascist politician's wife, a fanatical Nazi in love with Hitler, and the Duchess of Devonshire to choose from) - their lives were so intertwined, and their personalities and characters so shaped by and dependent on those of the other sisters, that to tell one story in isolation to the rest would be missing so much of relevance and import that it would scarcely seem worthwhile.
There is much to dislike about the Mitfords - their politics, their breezy upper-class obliviousness, their careless cruelty, their cliquish snobbery, their jealousies, rivalries and betrayals - but there is much to admire too. There was something uniquely 'them' about them, a refusal to be anything other than who they were, a refusal to bend to events, relationships, traumas, a refusal to apologise or explain. They were a unique product of a very particular time and place, and their capacity to inspire enduring fascination is a much a result of the pre-world aristocratic world they emerged from as it is about them. And, too, that fascination is also a result of their collective nature - a Nancy Mitford on her own would have been a talented but perhaps not exceptional author; a Diana Mitford would be a footnote in her infamous husband's biography; a Unity Mitford might be a bizarre cautionary tale. But together, they were something unheard of, something remarkable - six strong-willed, independent, beautiful, aristocratic sisters taking the world head-on.
So then this is a biography not of Nancy and Diana, Pamela and Jessica, Deborah and Unity, but of the sisters as a collective: The Mitford Sisters. And it's an enchanting read. I can only assume that much of the arch, nonchalant tone of the sisters' letters and words has rubbed off on Laura Thompson's own style, that perhaps inhabiting the sisters' lives to the extent required when writing a biography has led her to almost - not imitate, that would be too strong a word, but - assume that kind of tone herself. This is the kind of knowing, insouciant, personal memoir that once upon a time would have been intended only for a select readership, for family and friends rather than the wider world. I'm only grateful that it is the latter.
Non-Fiction
Pages: 480
This biography isn't quite like any I've ever read before. For a start, tackling six lives in one book would be challenge enough - but when those six are the Mitford sisters, who somehow seem to simultaneously embody and transcend the tumultuous years they lived in, the challenge is so much more daunting. And yet it would almost be dishonest to attempt a biography of just one sister alone (assuming, of course, you could pick one of greater interest than all of the rest - when you have a best-selling author, a radical socialist, a fascist politician's wife, a fanatical Nazi in love with Hitler, and the Duchess of Devonshire to choose from) - their lives were so intertwined, and their personalities and characters so shaped by and dependent on those of the other sisters, that to tell one story in isolation to the rest would be missing so much of relevance and import that it would scarcely seem worthwhile.
There is much to dislike about the Mitfords - their politics, their breezy upper-class obliviousness, their careless cruelty, their cliquish snobbery, their jealousies, rivalries and betrayals - but there is much to admire too. There was something uniquely 'them' about them, a refusal to be anything other than who they were, a refusal to bend to events, relationships, traumas, a refusal to apologise or explain. They were a unique product of a very particular time and place, and their capacity to inspire enduring fascination is a much a result of the pre-world aristocratic world they emerged from as it is about them. And, too, that fascination is also a result of their collective nature - a Nancy Mitford on her own would have been a talented but perhaps not exceptional author; a Diana Mitford would be a footnote in her infamous husband's biography; a Unity Mitford might be a bizarre cautionary tale. But together, they were something unheard of, something remarkable - six strong-willed, independent, beautiful, aristocratic sisters taking the world head-on.
So then this is a biography not of Nancy and Diana, Pamela and Jessica, Deborah and Unity, but of the sisters as a collective: The Mitford Sisters. And it's an enchanting read. I can only assume that much of the arch, nonchalant tone of the sisters' letters and words has rubbed off on Laura Thompson's own style, that perhaps inhabiting the sisters' lives to the extent required when writing a biography has led her to almost - not imitate, that would be too strong a word, but - assume that kind of tone herself. This is the kind of knowing, insouciant, personal memoir that once upon a time would have been intended only for a select readership, for family and friends rather than the wider world. I'm only grateful that it is the latter.