Overview

Everyone knows about the six flamboyant Mitford girls but in fact there were seven remarkable women in the famous family--the seventh was ""Muv,"" Lady Sydney Redesdale, the mother of the notorious sisters. Too often portrayed as different from them and outside the girl gang, she was really the original and much of her daughters' strong will, self-confidence, and extremism came from her. Sydney Redesdale was a divisive figure both among her daughters and subsequent biographers. Until their deaths, her girls were still squabbling over what she was really like, their differing views of her persisted for even longer than the political divides between them. Each daughter wanted to control the narrative and they wrote competing novels, memoirs and letters to vindicate their perspective. For Nancy and Jessica, she was a scapegoat. For Unity, Diana, Debo, and Pam, she was a saint. Biographers have been equally divided about how she should be portrayed. Many wondered how such exceptional children could spring from such ordinary parents, but was Sydney really so ""ordinary?"" The story of her life at the heart of one of Britain's most famous families is told in full here for the first time and is a missing piece in understanding one of the twentieth century's most complex and fascinating families.

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Rachel Trethewey read history at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, where she won the Philip Geddes Prize for student journalism. During her journalistic career she wrote features for the Daily Mail and Daily Express, and subsequently reviewed history books for The Independent. She is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and is the author of The Churchill Sisters, about Winston Churchill's daughters. She lives in Devon. Gabrielle Baker is a highly respected and experienced British voice actor with her own studio at her home in Kent, England. A trained actor, she has become a bestselling audiobook narrator for award-winning authors around the world. Gabrielle has a natural RP British accent and is also experienced with accents such as Dublin, Cork, Scottish, Australian, and most regional British accents. More than anything Gabrielle describes herself as a ""storyteller,"" and her love and passion for audiobooks has seen her rise in the industry over the last few years. She has a strong following of listeners and authors who seek out her work, and she has been described as "" . . . an auditory joy!""

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