English aristocrat, sister of writer Nancy Mitford, and a great beauty and socialite. Mosley left her husband for the married fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley, shocking 1930s British society with her blatant adultery. During WWII, they were imprisoned without trial for the fascist leanings.
The third of six sisters, she was considered the most beautiful and the cleverest of the children. At age 18, she married Bryan Guinness of the brewing dynasty and they had two sons. In 1932 she met the leader of the British Union of Fascists, Sir Oswald Mosley and was smitten. Although she left her husband, Oswald would not leave his wife. But his wife conveniently died in 1933, and the lovers married three years later. Mosley was a follower of Mussolini and Hitler and when they married they did so at the Berlin home of Joseph Goebbels, with Hitler among the guests. Diana’s parents were right-wing in their leanings and her sister Unity was mesmerized by Hitler. She had introduced Diana to Hitler in 1934 and Diana thought him to be an exceptional man, charming, clever and original.
In 1940, the Mosleys were imprisoned without trial as a security risk. British intelligence thought her to be a liaison between Hitler and her spouse and considered her to be far more clever and more dangerous than Mosley himself. They were taken to separate prisons, leaving their four children, two of them babies, aged 18 months and 11 weeks. They spent three and a half years in jail and moved to France after the war.
In 1977, Lady Mosely wrote her autobiography, “A Life of Contrasts” and in 1981 she produced a biography of her Paris neighbor, the Duchess of Windsor. Her husband died in 1980. Lady Mosley never apologized for her wartime behavior or support of Hitler; she denied being a racist and maintained that her husband had campaigned for peace. Years later she called Hitler a cruel and ambitious man but she claimed that Britain should have ignored him. She never acknowledged the Holocaust’s existence.
She died peacefully in Paris on August, 11, 2003 at age 93. Later that year, a biography, “Diana Mosley,” written by Anne de Courcy, with Mosley’s permission and approval, was released. She had stipulated that it could only be published after her death
Link to Wikipedia biography