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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Ella Risbridger

The Kardashians of history: why are we so obsessed with the Mitford sisters?

Historical spectacle … Joanna Vanderham as Diana Mitford in Outrageous.
Historical spectacle … Joanna Vanderham as Diana Mitford in Outrageous. Photograph: Kevin Baker/UKTV / BritBox / BBC Studios

The rise and fall of the Mitford sisters is like one of those earthquakes we’re due on a regular rotation: eight years out from Gucci’s much-documented Never Marry a Mitford jumper, four years after the BBC drama The Pursuit of Love, a new TV show appears fortuitously to bring them back into the public consciousness again.

Here they come, out of the mists of time, the seven children of a minor member of the House of Lords: Nancy, of course, the author of Love in a Cold Climate and The Pursuit of Love and probably the most famous in her own right; followed by Pamela, the least famous and fond chiefly of chickens and horrible men; then Tom, the only boy, with a weakness for the Nazis and, as far as history is concerned, no personality.

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