Secrets, scandals and Hitler’s favourite debutante: The true story behind Britbox’s Outrageous

Before the Kardashians, reality TV and social media, there were the Mitfords, six aristocratic British sisters, even more controversial and divisive than any 21st-century counterparts.

Unlike the Kardashians, the Mitfords’ end goal wasn’t fame, infamy and riches, but a by-product of large and exuberant lives which put them in the spheres of everyone ranging from Winston Churchill to Adolf Hitler.

There were six sisters and one brother, born between 1904 and 1920, to Baron and Lady Redesdale, a line of a landed gentry family who had great estates but not the money to properly run them.

While brother Thomas was educated at Eton, the sisters had no formal schooling as their “philistine” father didn’t believe in it for girls, and had only the arbitrary lessons of governesses.

Still, they were clever, and two of them, most notably Nancy, went on to publish books while reams of surviving letters between them revealed the wit they all possessed.

They were often left to their own devices, and despite being told from the beginning that their futures lay in marrying well-off men, they each developed strong personalities. By the 1930s, their political views would greatly diverge, and the Mitfords became known all over England and further afield, symbolic of the social division in the lead-up to war.

Just as there were vociferous debates for and against socialism, communism and fascism, they also existed within the microcosm of one family, who was never far from the headlines.

The story of the Mitfords has been dramatised in the miniseries Outrageous, which charts their youth and how sisters raised under the same roof could end up so differently – one a communist, one a British fascist, one a Hitler groupie and another a celebrated author with socialist sympathies.

Nancy was the oldest and in the 1930s became a professionally published author, drawing inspiration from her family and social circle to gently satirise English toffs. She ran with the likes of Evelyn Waugh and photographer Cecil Beaton, and they were called “Bright Young Things” by the papers.

Waugh was the one to encourage her writing, and she started with anonymous gossip columns in society magazines, which captured her incisive observations about the upper class. She published her first novel, Highland Fling, in 1931, and would go on to write The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate among others.

Diana was the third sister, born in 1910, and was considered the most beautiful of the six with her blonde ice queen features. She married at the age of 19 to Bryan Guinness, an heir of the brewing fortune, but in 1932 met Oswald Mosley, who had recently formed the British Union of Fascists.

Mosley was married to a daughter of Lord Curzon, the former Viceroy of India, and he and Diana started an affair. Diana soon left her husband, a scandal that was splashed all over the newspapers, and in 1933, Mosley’s wife Cynthia died suddenly.

Baron Redesdale banned his other children from seeing Diana, but they appeared to have defied him. She visited Hitler’s Germany in 1934 and returned several times, including as a special guest at the 1935 Olympics, becoming well-acquainted with Nazi figures, including Joseph Goebbels’ wife, Magda.

Diana and Oswald secretly married in 1936, which became public two years later, and she gave birth to two sons, including Max, who would later become the president of the governing body of Formula One.

During World War II, Diana and Mosley were classified as dangerous to Britain and were interned at Holloway Prison. After the war, they moved to Ireland and then France, where they were friends with the abdicated King, the Duke of Windsor and his American wife, Wallis Simpson.

Documents released in 2003 by the British National Archives revealed that Nancy, who was a “moderate” socialist, had informed on Diana to the authorities. In a report from January 1941, Nancy was said to have characterised Diana as “a ruthless and shrewd egoist, a devoted fascist and admirer of Hitler and sincerely desires the downfall of England and democracy in general”.

Nancy was also said to have told the authorities that her second sister, Pam and her then husband, millionaire scientist Derek Jackson, “had been heard to declare a) that all Jews in England should be killed and b) that the war should be stopped now ‘before we lose any more money’”.

Unity was the only sister who had any proper schooling, but only because she was too unruly at home. Boarding would also prove no match and she was expelled from two schools.

Remembered as an odd duck who would wear her pet snake as a necklace at a debutante ball, Unity was introduced to fascism by Diana, and joined the British fascists but it wasn’t enough. After bearing first-hand witness at the Nuremberg Rally in 1933 with Diana, at the age of 19, Unity returned to Munich in an attempt to meet Hitler. She delighted in telling the German that she was conceived in the Canadian town that to this day is still named Swastika.

Before long, she ingratiated herself into the Führer’s inner circle, apparently sparking Eva Braun’s jealousy. Even now, rumours still persistthat Unity secretly birthed Hitler’s love child, which was then given up for adoption.

Her antics in Germany caught the eye of MI5 in the UK. When Britain declared war on Germany in September 1939 after the invasion of Poland, Unity was so distraught she shot herself in the head with a pearl-handled pistol, supposedly a gift from Hitler.

She survived and was repatriated home via Switzerland. The bullet couldn’t be extracted and she lived the rest of her short-life with health issues until her death in 1948 from meningitis caused by the brain damage.

At the opposite end of the spectrum to Unity was Jessica, who was known as the “red sheep” of the family because of her declared loyalty to communism from her teens. She eloped with her second cousin, Esmond Romilly, a nephew by marriage to Churchill, and they ran off to the Spanish Civil War, before moving to a poor neighbourhood in London’s east end.

In 1939, the two emigrated to the US where Romilly eventually enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force, but he was declared missing in action in 1941 when his plane disappeared over Germany. Two years later, Jessica married Robert Treuhaft, an American civil rights lawyer, and they were active members of the Communist Party.

During McCarthyism and the Red Scare of the 1950s, both were summoned before the House of Un-American Activities but refused to name names, and in 1958 resigned from the party.

Later, she worked as a journalist and travelled to Montgomery, Alabama and was caught in a riot when the Freedom Riders were attacked by the Ku Klux Klan.

She published two books, The American Way of Death, a non-fiction book that was critical of the funeral industry and which led to Congressional hearings, and Hons and Rebels, a memoir about growing up a Mitford. Her grandson is James Forman Jr, a Pulitzer-winning writer.

Pamela shied away from publicity and lived a private life in the country. She was married for 15 years but later divorced and Jessica once called her a “you-know-what-bian” – Pamela lived for many years with a woman who was widely considered to be her lover.

Youngest sister Deborah lived the life that someone of her birth was expected to have – she was centrist, if not non-political, married the second son of the Duke of Devonshire who later was elevated after his brother died in combat, so she became a Duchess.

She became the preserver of the grand estate, Chatsworth House in Derbyshire, restoring it and opening it to the public. Through marriage, Deborah was related to John F. Kennedy and attended his inauguration and funeral. She was the last remaining Mitford sister when she died in 2014 at the age of 94.

Outrageous is on Britbox from July 24