Latest news with #Mitford
Sydney Morning Herald
22-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
The wild true story of the infamous Mitford sisters comes to life
Mitford fans recognise each other; they're the people in any bookshop hovering by the M shelf, picking up anything new about the endlessly fascinating Mitford sisters. A rabble of uneducated but dazzlingly posh girls, the six Mitford sisters (and their one brother) grew up between the wars in a succession of English country houses, raising bizarre animals, swapping cutting witticisms in languages they invented and pursuing whatever interests they could drum up in the absence of schooling. They were also scandalous. A century later, their fans remain legion. Twenty-five years ago, scriptwriter and Mitford fan Sarah Williams read a new biography of the family by Mary Lovell, The Mitford Girls. Episodic television was entering its golden phase. This was surely perfect material: extraordinary, racy and real. 'Then she wrote a pitch and had no luck whatsoever,' says Matthew Mosley, executive producer of new series Outrageous. 'We met her, three or four years ago, and said, 'We'd love to work with you; what story do you want to tell?'' The true story of the Mitfords, of course. Outrageous covers the sisters' volcanic lives up to 1937. Two of them – Diana and Unity – became prominent Fascists. Diana, having been known in the social pages as the most beautiful woman in England, was renamed 'the most hated woman in England' after she left her wealthy husband for Oswald Mosley, leader of the Blackshirts. Unity persuaded her parents to send her to finishing school in Munich, where she made it her business to find and befriend the Fuhrer. Jessica became a Communist and eventually a prominent journalist in the United States. Pamela became a gentlewoman farmer; Deborah married well and was known henceforth as the Duchess of Devonshire. Nancy, the eldest, turned their lives into comic novels – Love in a Cold Climate and The Pursuit of Love are the classics – that have never been out of print. What is remarkable is they were raised under one roof and were fiercely devoted to each other – mostly, anyway – but headed in such different directions. Loading 'They were so isolated. They were so isolated,' reflects Bessie Carter, who plays Nancy. She is not only the leading character, but provides snatches of wry voiceover tying the drama together; we see their world through her eyes. 'They were like this tribe in the countryside who weren't allowed to go to school and weren't really allowed to socialise, so they were really sort of starved of social connection. They only had each other and I suppose if you have siblings, if one sibling goes one way you probably want to go the other way just to spite them. There's that kind of dynamic, which I think then played out on a global scale.' Coincidentally, Carter has history with Nancy Mitford; a few years ago, she was chosen to read The Pursuit of Love as an audiobook. Television viewers may know her as Prudence Featherington in Bridgerton; she has a voice and face that fit easily into past times. One of the great things about Outrageous, she says, is that she didn't have to wear a corset. 'We were very much in an era where women could wear trousers. And I was lucky with Nancy; she was a lot more Bohemian in what she wore when juxtaposed with Diana, who is … like a steely swan.' Joanna Vanderham, who plays Diana, is often seen in evening dress. 'I was so uncomfortable. I had to have help going to the bathroom,' she says. Producer Matthew Mosley has history of a different kind with this material. He is Oswald Mosley's great-grandson, descended from the British Union of Fascists leader's first marriage. Mosley never met his great-grandfather – he died before he was born – but grew up with that knowledge. 'I've always been honest about it, because it's important to acknowledge things that happened and that are still happening,' he says. Loading Even so, it was a shock to find himself working on a series in which his disgraced ancestor was a major character. 'There was a moment of thinking, 'Oh goodness this is a very strange scenario,'' he says. 'But I loved working with Sarah, I loved her writing and her take on the story, I found it so immersive.' The situation came to feel normal, with only odd moments making him gasp. 'Seeing the amazing Joshua Sasse step out on set in all his hair and make-up as Oswald Mosley and give that performance: it was surreal to be in that position,' he remembers. Sasse threw himself into research, collecting scrapbooks of images and nuggets of history that Mosley knew nothing about. 'Joshua showed me a letter to Mosley from his mother where she compares him to the Messiah,' he told Time magazine. 'That's a strange little insight into his psychology that I won't forget.' As he points out, however, the main focus of the series is on the siblings. The Mitfords were aristocrats whose feet were firmly planted in another era; the paterfamilias, the second Baron Redesdale, was a huntin'-and-shootin' dictator notable for mismanaging the family finances so badly they were forced to keep renting out their country house and moving into ever smaller London flats. There would be no more money; Outrageous is, among other themes, about the dramatic decline of the landed gentry. A decision was made, however, to abandon the dialect of their class, long in vowels and clipped in consonants, which is – remarkably – now entirely obsolete. 'We wouldn't sound relatable if they spoke as they really did,' says Shannon Watson, who plays Unity. 'It was as if they had speech impediments.' A dialect coach brought them into line with each other. 'The point isn't how they spoke,' says Carter. 'The point is what they did in their lives.' This series finishes in 1937 – Mosley and Williams are hoping to make a second and possibly a third – when supposedly no one knew quite how monstrous the Nazi and Italian Fascist regimes were. News was filtering through, however, even to their country pile, thanks to Jessica's monitoring of radical literature. Their arguments are disquieting. 'I had lines where Diana said she was told about concentration camps, but it was Germany's business and she didn't intend to get embroiled in it,' says Vanderham. 'I found it very difficult to say those lines. I couldn't even learn them.' Loading This dark seam runs through their story; the family, split down the middle within their little bubble of privilege, is a microcosm of a divided society. 'I think at the heart of the series, it asks: can you love a family member and despise their politics?' says Carter. 'And I think that is the relevant point of the series. Here were six sisters who were repetitively told they weren't allowed to be educated, they had no role in society other than being a wife and mother and they said, 'I don't want that.' And I suppose, when you don't listen to people, you make them feel voiceless – and the voiceless will then go somewhere and scream louder.' Outrageous, as the name suggests, is as much froth as it is about trouble. The Mitfords were fascinating, surmises Mosley, as women 'who all, for better or worse, took their destinies into their hands and made their own fate'. But they were also funny. There are 17,000 letters written between them. 'If you read any of them, you get the sense immediately that humour was the lifeblood of this family, it's how they all related to each other.' Those intimate exchanges set the tone: there is the shadow of war, but there is also one sister kicking another under the dining table and giggling. 'And to me, that reflects life as it is,' says Moseley. 'It's never all one thing.'
The Age
22-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
The wild true story of the infamous Mitford sisters comes to life
Mitford fans recognise each other; they're the people in any bookshop hovering by the M shelf, picking up anything new about the endlessly fascinating Mitford sisters. A rabble of uneducated but dazzlingly posh girls, the six Mitford sisters (and their one brother) grew up between the wars in a succession of English country houses, raising bizarre animals, swapping cutting witticisms in languages they invented and pursuing whatever interests they could drum up in the absence of schooling. They were also scandalous. A century later, their fans remain legion. Twenty-five years ago, scriptwriter and Mitford fan Sarah Williams read a new biography of the family by Mary Lovell, The Mitford Girls. Episodic television was entering its golden phase. This was surely perfect material: extraordinary, racy and real. 'Then she wrote a pitch and had no luck whatsoever,' says Matthew Mosley, executive producer of new series Outrageous. 'We met her, three or four years ago, and said, 'We'd love to work with you; what story do you want to tell?'' The true story of the Mitfords, of course. Outrageous covers the sisters' volcanic lives up to 1937. Two of them – Diana and Unity – became prominent Fascists. Diana, having been known in the social pages as the most beautiful woman in England, was renamed 'the most hated woman in England' after she left her wealthy husband for Oswald Mosley, leader of the Blackshirts. Unity persuaded her parents to send her to finishing school in Munich, where she made it her business to find and befriend the Fuhrer. Jessica became a Communist and eventually a prominent journalist in the United States. Pamela became a gentlewoman farmer; Deborah married well and was known henceforth as the Duchess of Devonshire. Nancy, the eldest, turned their lives into comic novels – Love in a Cold Climate and The Pursuit of Love are the classics – that have never been out of print. What is remarkable is they were raised under one roof and were fiercely devoted to each other – mostly, anyway – but headed in such different directions. Loading 'They were so isolated. They were so isolated,' reflects Bessie Carter, who plays Nancy. She is not only the leading character, but provides snatches of wry voiceover tying the drama together; we see their world through her eyes. 'They were like this tribe in the countryside who weren't allowed to go to school and weren't really allowed to socialise, so they were really sort of starved of social connection. They only had each other and I suppose if you have siblings, if one sibling goes one way you probably want to go the other way just to spite them. There's that kind of dynamic, which I think then played out on a global scale.' Coincidentally, Carter has history with Nancy Mitford; a few years ago, she was chosen to read The Pursuit of Love as an audiobook. Television viewers may know her as Prudence Featherington in Bridgerton; she has a voice and face that fit easily into past times. One of the great things about Outrageous, she says, is that she didn't have to wear a corset. 'We were very much in an era where women could wear trousers. And I was lucky with Nancy; she was a lot more Bohemian in what she wore when juxtaposed with Diana, who is … like a steely swan.' Joanna Vanderham, who plays Diana, is often seen in evening dress. 'I was so uncomfortable. I had to have help going to the bathroom,' she says. Producer Matthew Mosley has history of a different kind with this material. He is Oswald Mosley's great-grandson, descended from the British Union of Fascists leader's first marriage. Mosley never met his great-grandfather – he died before he was born – but grew up with that knowledge. 'I've always been honest about it, because it's important to acknowledge things that happened and that are still happening,' he says. Loading Even so, it was a shock to find himself working on a series in which his disgraced ancestor was a major character. 'There was a moment of thinking, 'Oh goodness this is a very strange scenario,'' he says. 'But I loved working with Sarah, I loved her writing and her take on the story, I found it so immersive.' The situation came to feel normal, with only odd moments making him gasp. 'Seeing the amazing Joshua Sasse step out on set in all his hair and make-up as Oswald Mosley and give that performance: it was surreal to be in that position,' he remembers. Sasse threw himself into research, collecting scrapbooks of images and nuggets of history that Mosley knew nothing about. 'Joshua showed me a letter to Mosley from his mother where she compares him to the Messiah,' he told Time magazine. 'That's a strange little insight into his psychology that I won't forget.' As he points out, however, the main focus of the series is on the siblings. The Mitfords were aristocrats whose feet were firmly planted in another era; the paterfamilias, the second Baron Redesdale, was a huntin'-and-shootin' dictator notable for mismanaging the family finances so badly they were forced to keep renting out their country house and moving into ever smaller London flats. There would be no more money; Outrageous is, among other themes, about the dramatic decline of the landed gentry. A decision was made, however, to abandon the dialect of their class, long in vowels and clipped in consonants, which is – remarkably – now entirely obsolete. 'We wouldn't sound relatable if they spoke as they really did,' says Shannon Watson, who plays Unity. 'It was as if they had speech impediments.' A dialect coach brought them into line with each other. 'The point isn't how they spoke,' says Carter. 'The point is what they did in their lives.' This series finishes in 1937 – Mosley and Williams are hoping to make a second and possibly a third – when supposedly no one knew quite how monstrous the Nazi and Italian Fascist regimes were. News was filtering through, however, even to their country pile, thanks to Jessica's monitoring of radical literature. Their arguments are disquieting. 'I had lines where Diana said she was told about concentration camps, but it was Germany's business and she didn't intend to get embroiled in it,' says Vanderham. 'I found it very difficult to say those lines. I couldn't even learn them.' Loading This dark seam runs through their story; the family, split down the middle within their little bubble of privilege, is a microcosm of a divided society. 'I think at the heart of the series, it asks: can you love a family member and despise their politics?' says Carter. 'And I think that is the relevant point of the series. Here were six sisters who were repetitively told they weren't allowed to be educated, they had no role in society other than being a wife and mother and they said, 'I don't want that.' And I suppose, when you don't listen to people, you make them feel voiceless – and the voiceless will then go somewhere and scream louder.' Outrageous, as the name suggests, is as much froth as it is about trouble. The Mitfords were fascinating, surmises Mosley, as women 'who all, for better or worse, took their destinies into their hands and made their own fate'. But they were also funny. There are 17,000 letters written between them. 'If you read any of them, you get the sense immediately that humour was the lifeblood of this family, it's how they all related to each other.' Those intimate exchanges set the tone: there is the shadow of war, but there is also one sister kicking another under the dining table and giggling. 'And to me, that reflects life as it is,' says Moseley. 'It's never all one thing.'
The Hindu
16-07-2025
- Politics
- The Hindu
A daylight murder in Old Dhaka highlights Bangladesh's lawlessness
The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), the Hasina-era main opposition which many see today as a front-runner for the coming elections, is facing a turbulent period amid nationwide protests over allegations that the party was involved in killings and rampant extortion. Public outrage reached a boiling point following the murder of a local trader, Chand Mia alias Sohag, on July 9 in broad daylight on the premises of Sir Salimullah Medical College Mitford Hospital in Dhaka's Chawkbazar area. The attack was carried out by local leaders and activists of the BNP's student and youth wing. According to eyewitnesses and CCTV footage that surfaced two days after the incident, the attackers dragged Sohag's bloodied body onto the adjacent road and continued the assault. The video shows several men stomping on his chest, punching his face, and squashing his lifeless body with large concrete blocks. Despite the presence of hospital staff, security guards and hundreds of people, no one intervened. The killing, reportedly linked to a turf dispute over control of the local scrap metal and copper wire trade, has sent shockwaves across the capital and beyond. A murder case was filed with Kotwali Police Station in the capital by the victim's sister. Home Affairs Adviser Lt. Gen. (retd) Md Jahangir Alam Chowdhury on Saturday said that five people were arrested in connection with the incident. 'It's not just the Mitford case — police are taking immediate action in such incidents across the country. However, the Mitford incident is deeply regrettable. In a civilised nation, such brutality is unacceptable', the adviser said. Five activists from three affiliated wings of BNP have been expelled for life over their alleged involvement in the incident. Protests, rallies held In response to the incident, thousands of university and college students, members of various student organisations and political parties, and ordinary citizens took to the streets. Students from universities across the country held protest marches and rallies, expressing frustration over what they described as ongoing extortion and terrorism across Bangladesh. Protesters accuse BNP activists of filling the power vacuum left by the Awami League-led government, taking control of extortion rackets and asserting violent dominance over local businesses and territories. Chanting slogans such as 'Tarique will go like Sheikh Hasina,' 'Money extorted in Paltan, shares fly to London,' and 'The new killer follows the path of the old killer,' demonstrators placed direct blame on BNP's acting chairman Tarique Rahman, who is based in London. BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir expressed deep concern over the killing. He warned that the failure to ensure strict punishment for those involved would only deepen the culture of impunity and push society further into darkness. 'This barbaric act is not just the loss of a life — it reflects a deep failure in ensuring state security, upholding citizens' rights, and maintaining law and order. Our party's principles, ideals, and politics have no connection whatsoever with terrorism or brutality. No matter who the perpetrator is, they must never be above the law and justice,' Mr. Alamgir said. However, BNP Senior Joint Secretary General Ruhul Kabir Rizvi alleged that certain political parties are attempting to exploit the incident by giving it a political colour for their own gain. Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami condemned the killing. In a statement, the party's Secretary General and former MP Mia Golam Parwar said several national dailies reported that leaders of the Chawkbazar unit of Jubo Dal (BNP's youth wing) had demanded a large sum of extortion money from the victim. When he refused, Jubo Dal's terrorists carried out the killing, he alleged. 'The nation is now asking: how safe are people's lives and property in the hands of a party whose leaders shelter extortionists and criminals while preaching about politics?' Mr. Parwar asked. 'If such a party comes to power, the country, the people, and the state can never be safe. This incident once again echoes the footsteps of fallen fascism.' Upcoming elections Bangladesh is likely to hold general elections in the first half of 2026 and the BNP is seen as a frontrunner by many. The Islamist Jamaat is also preparing to contest the elections, while the Awami League has been banned by the interim government. The National Citizens Party, formed by the student leaders who led anti-Hasina protests, is a new entrant. As election fever is gradually gripping the country, the BNP is grappling with multiple issues, including internal infighting, political violence, and alleged extortion by party leaders. More than a thousand leaders and activists have already been expelled for their involvement in such activities. However, these disciplinary actions have largely proved ineffective, as party members continue to engage in similar misconduct. In 2024, following the fall of the Hasina-led government, violence within BNP circles intensified, leading to at least 1,697 injuries and 31 deaths. According to a report by the Human Rights Support Society (HRSS), at least 79 people were killed and around 4,124 injured in 529 incidents of political violence across Bangladesh in the past six months. The HRSS attributes most of the violence to turf wars, political vendettas, internal disputes over party committee formations, extortion, and attempts to seize control of various establishments. Of the 529 incidents recorded, 445 were linked to internal conflicts within the BNP or clashes involving BNP and other political parties. Specifically, 302 incidents stemmed from the BNP's internal feuds, resulting in 46 deaths and at least 2,834 injuries. Meanwhile, stability is yet to be fully restored across the country, as mob violence continues to claim lives at an alarming rate. Human rights organisations document that from September 2024 to June 2025, at least 253 incidents of mob violence occurred, resulting in 163 deaths and 312 injuries. Despite repeated assurances from law enforcement agencies, in most cases the perpetrators have remained beyond the reach of justice. While talking on the countrywide protests against the BNP, Nazmul Islam, a political scientist, told The Hindu that while the unrest may not cause a major crisis for the party, it will undoubtedly have an immediate impact on public perception. 'We must recognise that the BNP remains a key political party in the current political context of Bangladesh. However, this status also brings significant challenges in managing and controlling its grassroots supporters,' said Mr. Islam. 'After a long hiatus, BNP activists have had the opportunity to reengage in open political activity, but this resurgence also presents new challenges for party leadership, particularly in terms of internal discipline. One of the underlying issues is the BNP's limited opportunity in recent years to practise internal democratic governance, which has weakened their control mechanisms,' he added.
NZ Herald
15-07-2025
- Entertainment
- NZ Herald
Nancy & the Nazis: Bringing the Mitford sisters to life in Outrageous TV drama
Period drama Outrageous taps into our continuing fascination with the Mitford family. The story of the Mitford sisters exists in a peculiarly English mythology. They were the beautiful, charming, posh gals who were the daughters of a fading aristocracy. From the 1930s onward, they variously embraced fascism and its leaders,
Winnipeg Free Press
28-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Winnipeg Free Press
Scandalous society sisters' saga still enthrals
Outrageous (now streaming on BritBox, with new episodes dropping on Tuesdays) is the story of the Mitford sisters, six aristocratic Englishwomen whose lives overlapped with a who's-who of 20th-century history in a fashionable flurry of weddings, divorces, betrayals and scandals. Some cultural commentators have attempted to explain why Mitford mania is still relevant today by comparing the sisters to the Kardashians, which is catchy but misleading. Yes, both sibling sets have a knack for grabbing tabloid headlines and a talent for picking terrible men. But if one is really looking for relevance in Outrageous, the most relatable scene for many 2025 viewers might be the Christmas dinner where the Mitford girls' mother (Anna Chancellor) tells them to stop arguing about Hitler and just pass the Brussels sprouts. What really makes the Mitford saga so crushingly current is its collision of ordinary family life (well, sort of ordinary — the Mitfords were an eccentric lot) with polarizing politics. Coming of age in the 1930s, in a world that seems on the verge of violence and collapse, the sibs take up entrenched and irreconcilable political positions, testing their sisterly bonds and taking the 'let's agree to disagree' stance to its absolute limits. Now that feels contemporary. This soapy, splashy six-episode series is never subtle, but then neither were its subjects. The messy adolescent bedroom of Unity (Shannon Watson) and Jessica (Zoe Brough) features swastikas and pictures of the Fuhrer on one side and images of Marx, Lenin and the hammer and sickle on the other. This is not the scriptwriters creating an overly obvious image of a house divided: This was the sisters' actual décor. (In real life, they drew a chalk line down the centre.) Outrageous initially presents these two sisters' ideological differences as awkward comedy, as in a scene in which Unity is vigorously Sieg Heiling on the well-rolled lawn of the family's ancestral home while Jessica lounges nearby, reading The Daily Worker. But things get more serious, more world-historical, when Unity travels to Munich, eventually gaining entry into Hitler's inner circle, while Jessica becomes enamoured with her cousin Esmond Romilly, a communist who has gone off to fight in the Spanish Civil War. Meanwhile, another emotional and political rift is developing between Diana (Joanna Vanderham), the beauty of the family, and Nancy (Bessie Carter), 'the clever one.' After Diana leaves a safe society marriage to begin an affair with Oswald Mosley (Joshua Sasse), the black-shirted leader of the British Union of Fascists, Nancy — the writer who will become known for The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate — pens the 1935 comic novel Wigs on the Green. The book satirizes a fictionalized version of Mosley's movement as silly, self-important and ineffectual, and even though Nancy defends it as 'meaningless fun,' as 'froth,' Diana is furious. The eventual fate of Wigs on the Green hints at some of the problems with Outrageous. After the war, Nancy Mitford declined to reprint the book. There was 'nothing funny about fascists,' she suggested. Likewise, the series can feel confused as it deals with its political clashes and with the very Mitfordian overlap of private life and public events. Sometimes the show plays as a good-looking comic romp, with its posh frocks, jaunty jazz-age songs and seemingly endless supply of champagne. Sundays Kevin Rollason's Sunday newsletter honouring and remembering lives well-lived in Manitoba. Sometimes it plays as melodrama, with the Mitford girls' rivalries, resentments and deep love given poignant expression. And then, whoa, suddenly we're at the Nuremberg Rally with Unity and Diana. Not surprisingly, Outrageous has a tricky time handling these tonally disparate parts. The show struggles to convey the weight of wider world events, but it does understand the divided dinner table. What will resonate for many viewers, what will make the leap from the 1930s to today, are the smaller, intimate conflicts of family members who love each other but can't stand each other's politics. Alison GillmorWriter Studying at the University of Winnipeg and later Toronto's York University, Alison Gillmor planned to become an art historian. She ended up catching the journalism bug when she started as visual arts reviewer at the Winnipeg Free Press in 1992. Read full biography Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber. Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
