Two Autograph Letters Signed ('Diana Mosley') from Lady Diana Mosley [Diana Mitford] to the architectural historian Peter Reid, regarding the family home (Rolleston Hall, Burton-on-Trent) of her husband Sir Oswald Mosley.

Author: 
Lady Diana Mosley [Diana Mitford; née Freeman-Mitford] (1910-2003), wife of the leader of the British Union of Fascists Sir Oswald Mosley, one of the Mitford sisters [Peter Reid]
Publication details: 
On letterheads of Temple de la Gloire, Orsay, Essonne. 16 May 1972 and 13 August 1984.
£180.00
SKU: 11480

Both letters good, on lightly-aged paper. The second letter in envelope addressed by Mosley to 'Peter Reid Esq | 68 New Cavendish Street | London W1 M 7 LD [sic] | Angleterre'. Letter One (2pp., 12mo): She begins: 'My husband asked me to answer your letter. I think we have got photographs of Rolleston, but all such things are stored in Ireland, where we used to have a house. When I go through them (which one day I must) I will send you what I find. (I'm not absolutely certain.)' She briefly describes Rolleston's transformation from 'a nice 18th Cent house with bits of Elizabethan at the back' to 'a sort of grand Italian villa-ish style'. She and her husband have 'a little amateurish water colour of the old house dated 1816'. Keeping a record is 'such a good idea'. 'In Staffordshire every other house seems to have been pulled down, very sad.' Letter Two (2pp, 8vo): She thanks him for his letter and enclosures, and asks to hold on to them 'until the publisher decides which would be the best to use'. 'The family tradition was that the big Jacobean hall was incorporated in the 18th Century Rolleston. It was totally destroyed in the fire, & its pictures, Van Dycks according to my mother in law.' She describes 'what remained in the way of pictures', now in the possession of her eldest stepson, the last with 'a surprisingly lovely French frame, Louis Philippe I imagine'. She also describes a picture 'which has been cut from the burnt part & was given by my husband to my son Max, it is at his house in Brompton Square'.