The Six Audiobook Summary

The eldest was a razor-sharp novelist of upper-class manners; the second was loved by John Betjeman; the third was a fascist who married Oswald Mosley; the fourth idolized Hitler and shot herself in the head when Britain declared war on Germany; the fifth was a member of the American Communist Party; the sixth became Duchess of Devonshire.

They were the Mitford sisters: Nancy, Pamela, Diana, Unity, Jessica, and Deborah. Born into country-house privilege in the early years of the 20th century, they became prominent as “bright young things” in the high society of interwar London. Then, as the shadows crept over 1930s Europe, the stark—and very public—differences in their outlooks came to symbolize the political polarities of a dangerous decade.

The intertwined stories of their stylish and scandalous lives—recounted in masterly fashion by Laura Thompson—hold up a revelatory mirror to upper-class English life before and after WWII. The Six was previously published as Take Six Girls.

“[F]or readers yearning for another take on the glamorous sisters’ ‘posh past,’ Thompson’s smart, jaunty, and wittily entertaining book will amply fill their desire. Steeped in Mitford lore and mythmaking, the book offers sharply drawn portraits of each woman, teases out the complexities of their fraught, competitive relationships with one another, and sets their lives within the context of a radically changing world. … [Thompson’s] clear-eyed view of the sisters’ strengths and foibles makes this gossipy story a delight.”
—Kirkus, starred review

“Thompson astutely compares wry contemporary assessments and countless often-brutal newspaper articles on the Mitford daughters to self-sufficient Nancy’s more benign fictional version and expat Jessica’s heavily embellished tell-all….she successfully shows how this group of six captured the zeitgeist by being utterly committed and completely ‘shame-free.’”
—Publishers Weekly

“[Laura Thompson] does a remarkable job of isolating the sisters’ individualism, defining in fluid, sensitive, and authoritative language their individual distinctions, while at the same time keeping a sharp but understanding eye on the bigger picture.” —Booklist