Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A writer and a member of the celebrated Mitford family, best known as one of the six Mitford sisters.
On the island
Eight records
After the Ball was a tremendous song to us. We used to sing it round the piano. My mother played all those kinds of songs, like I'll sing these songs of Araby and songs of her childhood, you see, and so we sort of grew up with them.
I'm Sex Appeal Sarah. The one you've just been singing. Absolutely. Who's going to sing it now? This is going to be by Douglas Bing, comedian. In English. Right, exactly.
The third one is Louise, which is also extremely reminiscent of childhood, because we were all madly in love with Maurice Chevalier, as who wouldn't be, I'm sure that anyone listening to his record will be.
Die Moorsoldaten (The Peat Bog Soldiers)Favourite
which is the Petebog Soldiers, but it's sung in German. It's one of the great Spanish Civil War songs. And the history of this one is that it was actually a song that was composed by inmates of the German concentration camps, Jews and Communists and other people found unacceptable by Hitler. They composed this song in the concentration camps. It then became a theme song of the German brigade.
That well known anthem, the Red Flag, which used to be I don't know if it still is the official anthem of the Labour Party of Great Britain as well as of the Communist Party. Except that we Communists used to sing, The People's Flag is palest pink, it's not as red as you might think, to tease the Labour Party.
Lullaby of Broadway, a wonderful song which I heard before I came to America and which symbolized America to me. People used to say, you know, America's not a bit like the musicals and the movies that you've seen. I thought it was exactly like that, and that's why I've chosen Lullaby of Broadway.
The next record is Dancing Cheek to Cheek. Oh yeah, that was one of our favorite songs. In fact, when we were teenagers, my mother took three of us, Unity and Debo and myself, on a cruise of the Mediterranean. and um there was dancing at night, you know. And there was a man there with a sort of huge, huge nose. He and we called him the Chicken Man because of his large nose. So we we used to sing Dancing Beak to Beak when dancing with him.
You're Goin' to Lose Your Girl
Carol Gibbons & His Savoy Hotel Orpheans
You see, the point about that record is that there was a song, again when we were children, that used to be very popular. I don't suppose anybody's heard of it today, but I'm frightfully glad we found it. But Deborah, the youngest of us, was a tremendous thumb sucker, and she sucked on until she was nine years old, as a consequence of which one thumb is about half an inch shorter than the other one. It's sort of sp r rather splayed out, if you know what I mean, and short. So we used to sing You're Going to Lose Your Thumb to the song of You're Going to Lose Your Girl, to that tune.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:39Could you adapt yourself to loneliness, Miss Mitford?
I hate it.
Presenter asks
1:53Did you go to school?
No, we weren't allowed. My mother was very much opposed to the idea of girls going to school at all. So we went th we did not have that pleasure. I should have loved to go, but no.
Presenter asks
4:47Your mother seems to have taken it all quite serenely. Was there a sort of rapprochement when you were both older?
She was amazing, actually. I don't think I realised how amazing she was until towards the end of her life. Because, I mean, when I was a child, I didn't like her at all. I hated her. Because she was so frightfully strict and cold and unapproachable. And besides, not letting us go to school, you see. But then I began to realise that she probably had rather a thin time of it. ... Oh, there was a terrific rapprochement. But not for a long, long time. Not until after I'd moved to America, remarried, and had a daughter aged, then aged seven, by my first husband. ... And when Constantia was about seven, she wrote to my mother ... I wish that you would come and visit us in Oakland one day. And to my absolute consternation, my mother sent a telegram saying have accepted Dinky's invitation, arriving in a fortnight. And after that things were different. She was marvellous. She was absolutely bent on friendship.
The keepsakes
Presenter asks
7:28Who brought politics into the family in the first place? Two of your sisters veered off to the extreme right, you to the extreme left. Who started it?
Well, uh Diana Moseley, then Guinness, and she took up with Sir Oswald Moseley with just forming the British Union of Fascists. And I think the other ones have got unity interested. In fact, I was probably far more interested than Unity when we were much younger in politics than she was. ... But I was deeply interested by about thirteen in in pacifism and that sort of thing. And so that actually I was sort of an anti-fascist before she was a fascist, I think.
Presenter asks
11:04Why did you and your husband, Esmond Romilly, elect to emigrate to the United States?
Well, when we first went over, it wasn't really with the idea of emigrating. But as you probably know, you can't get jobs in America unless you're on an immigration visa, which we got. But the re the purpose, I think, was the despairing feeling after the Mun Munich betrayal by Chamberlain and the capitulation to Hitler. And we could see that the appeasement people in this country, including of course the fascists and people like Sir Oswald Moseley, who's now my brother-in-law, were beginning to dominate the political scene in a terrifying fashion. We thought that war was bound to break out, but we would stay in America until it broke out and then return home. And of course Esmond did come back. He volunteered for the Air Force, but he was killed after he'd been there a short time.
Presenter asks
12:49You both joined the American Communist Party and began working very actively. Now for what? The overthrow of the American Government, World Revolution, what was the big thing?
Well of course it would have been nice to overthrow it. But um actually what we were mainly working for at the beginning and the whole Communist Party position then was the strongest possible prosecution of the war against Hitler. So this was the first thing, you see ... Well then after the war I got mostly active in the civil rights movement, that is rights for black people, and that became sort of the all absorbing passion of life for a very long time, for a number of years in fact.
“My mother was very much opposed to the idea of girls going to school at all. So we went th we did not have that pleasure. I should have loved to go, but no.”
“I started saving up, I think, when I was about twelve, and that was right after I was totally denied my very last effort to go to school, which was an effort to go to the local grammar school. My mother said, No, absolutely not. So I started running away account in Drummonds, which is our family bank.”
“I still feel that the the goals of communism, which are essentially the fair distribution of the earth's resources, is probably the only way, in the end, you know, to create a decent world.”