Robert J. Avrech

I continue my literary march through the extremely weird Mitford family with the autobiography of Diana Mitford Mosley, an aristocratic beauty who insisted that her BFF, Adolph Hitler, was a most charming and well mannered man.

“Diana Mitford is doubtless one of the most exceptional women of the twentieth century. Perhaps the only person adored by both Churchill and Hitler, she grew up at the heart of the glamorous literary and aristocratic set surrounding the Mitfords – Evelyn Waugh was but one to fall in love with her. Divorcing her wealthy husband for the married Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists, she notoriously became friends with Magda and Joseph Goebbels, and Adolf Hitler. As a result she was detained during the war for three years at Holloway Prison. She has now revised her exceptional autobiography with new photographs. In five new chapters, she writes about the secret purpose of her visits to Nazi Germany, the surprise recovery from serious illness and new friends, including the Duchess of Windsor and A.N. Wilson.”

The Elgin pocket watch belonged to my maternal grandmother, Genia Keiler, z’l.