We all have trouble with our kids but they're not hanging out with Hitler

Star of the new Mitford sisters series explains why good period drama like this can be a "word of warning" for our times.

- By ELLA WALKER

YOU may not know all their names - there are six of them after all - but if you have even a passing interest in 1930s Britain, you'll have heard of the Mitford sisters.

The gaggle of rather scandalous, high-society siblings - Nancy, Pamela, Diana, Unity, Jessica and Deborah - tore up the aristocratic social scene of their day, making headlines, partying to excess, and rubbing shoulders with the rich and politically well-connected (they were family friends with Winston Churchill), as well as the politically extreme.

"They are a fascinating family," says Fisherman's Friends star James Purefoy, 61, who plays the family's patriarch, Farve, in new period drama Outrageous.

He says he knows "probably more than most, but not as much as an expert" when it comes to the sisters, and their lone brother Tom.

The Taunton-born actor actually knows a descendant of Diana, who famously married Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists, and hosted Adolf Hitler as a guest of honour at their wedding. Unity was similarly notorious for being chums with the Nazi leader.

The show has been created and written by Sarah Williams (Small Island, Flesh and Blood, Becoming Jane) and is based on the biography, The Mitford Girls by Mary Lovell, which tells the story of these raucous, uncompromising and yes, outrageous, women, during the decade leading up to the outbreak of the Second World War.

"He comes from a different time. He fought in the First World War. He lost a lung. He obviously didn't see that's too much of a problem," says James of Farve, who stars alongside Four Weddings and a Funeral legend, Anna Chancellor, 60, playing Muv, the girls' mother.