Unity Mitford was Hitler's 'Baby Reindeer' stalker

The publication of the British socialite’s diaries has revealed that her infatuation with the Nazi leader went much deeper than many historians had realised, writes Guy Walters

- Guy Walters

Of all the British people who met Adolf Hitler, Unity Mitford is surely the one who met him the most frequently, and therefore probably knew him better than anyone else from these islands. It is for this reason alone that the new publication of her diary is of immense historical interest. It would be fascinating enough if she had met the Fuhrer, say, 20 times, but Mitford met him on an astonishing 139 occasions, which therefore makes her diary even more fascinating.

The six Mitford Girls – of which Unity was the fourth – surely need little introduction. The eldest was Nancy, a novelist and biographer, famous for her witty novels like The Pursuit of Love; while the third sister, the glacially beautiful Diana, was a fascist and married the Blackshirt leader Sir Oswald Mosley.

The sixth sister, Deborah, would become the Duchess of Devonshire, and seemed to spend most of her later years writing letters to the travel writer Patrick Leigh Fermor.

There is a whole industry attached to these wretched siblings. For decades, it seems, we have had to endure countless biographies, memoirs, letters, novels, filmed adaptations of novels and, yes, magazine and newspaper articles, about these six dead posh women and their dysfunctional and largely unpleasant family.

Unity’s diary will doubtless be pored over by those who are unhealthily obsessed by the Mitfords, who were in truth an absurd bunch of monstrously over-venerated, overrated and over-privileged women, who were dysfunctional, unpleasant, and largely fascist.