The shocking real story behind the Mitford Sisters TV show Outrageous
7-8 minute read
By Ellie Ayton | June 16, 2025
Drama series Outrageous chronicles the tantalising tale of six different sisters in the 1930s. But did you know it’s based on a true story? Join us as we delve into the very real history behind one of history’s most scandalous families.
Outrageous is a story of betrayal, scandal and sisterly bonds set in the 1930s, as war looms on the horizon and family bonds are tested. It was released on U&Drama and Britbox on 18 June 2025 and boasts an all-star cast.
Who is in the cast of Outrageous?
It stars Bridgerton’s Bessie Carter (daughter of Jim Carter, of Downton Abbey fame, and Imelda Staunton from The Crown) as Nancy Mitford, the eldest of the Mitford siblings.
Also making up the cast are Anna Chancellor as matriarch Sydney Bowles Mitford, James Purefoy as David Freeman-Mitford, Joanna Vanderham as Diana Mitford, Toby Regbo as Tom Mitford, Isobel Jesper Jones as Pamela Mitford, Zoe Brough as Jessica Mitford, Shannon Watson as Unity Mitford, and Orla Hill as Deborah Mitford.
The supporting cast includes Calam Lynch (Bridgerton) as Bryan Guinness and Joshua Sasse (Galavant) as Oswald Mosley.
The four eldest Mitford sisters – Nancy, Diana, Unity and Jessica, pictured in The Sketch, 6 January 1932.
While it all seems too scandalous to be true, Outrageous is based on a very real and often controversial family.
But who were the Mitfords, and how did they come to include a writer, a fascist and a communist in their family tree?
Who were the Mitford family?
With roots that stretch back to the Middle Ages, the Mitfords were an English aristocratic family headed by David Freeman-Mitford, 2nd Baron Redesdale, and Sydney Bowles. They married in London in 1904.
David and Sydney’s portraits on the occasion of their wedding, pictured in Gentlewoman, 13 February 1904.
Sydney was the daughter of publisher and politician Thomas Gibson Bowles, and David was the second son of Bertram, Lord Redesdale.
There was already a hint of scandal on both sides of the family.
Thomas Gibson Bowles was the illegitimate son of Thomas Milner Gibson and Susannah Bowles, a servant, born in London in 1841. David’s father, Bertram, reportedly fathered two children with a geisha while living in Japan, and may even have been the biological father of Clementine Hozier, wife of Winston Churchill.
The Mitford family pictured in 1928. Front row, from left to right: Sydney, Unity, Jessica, Deborah, David. Second row: Diana and Pamela. Back row: Nancy and Tom. By Unknown author, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=65679751
The couple had seven children – six girls and one boy – and their family homes were Asthall Manor and Swinbrook in Oxfordshire. Their children were among the ‘Bright Young Things’ of the Roaring Twenties.
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There is still a Lord Redesdale today: Rupert Bertram Mitford, who is a life peer, member of the House of Lords, and affiliated with the Liberal Democrats. He’s the first cousin, once removed, of the infamous Mitford siblings.
It could be argued that David and Sydney’s very different and often outrageous children outshone them. So, let’s meet the Mitford brood…
Who was Nancy Mitford?
Nancy (1904-1973) was the eldest of the Mitford siblings, a writer and sharp-eyed chronicler of upper-class absurdities.
Nancy Mitford, the ‘clever novelist’, pictured in The Sketch, 23 March 1932.
She married Peter Rodd in 1933, but later divorced him. During the Second World War, she fell in love with Gaston Palewski, a Free French Officer.
Nancy fled to France and stayed, weaving her heartbreak and humour into novels like The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate. She wrote of kings, both literal and metaphorical, penning biographies like love letters to the past.
Who was Pamela Mitford?
Pamela (1907-1994), or ‘Woman’ as her sisters teasingly called her, married a millionaire physicist, Derek Jackson, but their union soon splintered. Unlike her sisters, she preferred a quiet life in the countryside.
Lord Redesdale’s second daughter, Pamela Mitford, pictured in The Bystander, 12 April 1933.
In the 1960s, she found companionship not in the drawing rooms of England but in the stables of Italy, living with the horsewoman Giuditta Tommasi.
Who was Tom Mitford?
Tom, or Major Thomas David Freeman-Mitford (1909-1945), the sole brother, was handsome and enigmatic. He had a schoolboy affair with James Lees-Milne, and later, he tangled with the glittering but troubled dancer Tilly Losch, herself entangled in a doomed marriage.
Tom died of his wounds aged 36. Gloucester Citizen, 10 April 1945.
Politics pulled him in darker directions. A supporter of British fascism, he refused to fight in Europe and was sent to the jungles of Burma, where he met a soldier’s end, dying of his wounds in 1945.
Who was Diana Mitford?
Perhaps the most scandalous of all the Mitford siblings, Diana (1910-2003) married Bryan Guinness, a poet and aristocrat, and for a while lived the perfect society dream.
Diana Mitford in The Sketch, 12 December 1928.
But then she fell in love with Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists. She left her first husband and married Mosley in Germany, with Adolf Hitler himself as the guest of honour. The wedding was a secret, and the rest of the world did not learn about it until years later.
She made an appearance in season 6 of Peaky Blinders, played by Amber Anderson, alongside Sam Claflin’s Oswald Mosley.
Diana was arrested in 1940, as reported in The People , 30 June 1940.
Her fascist sympathies saw her interned for three years during the Second World War. After, she saw success as a writer but was plagued by her sympathy for Hitler and denial of the Holocaust.
Who was Unity Mitford?
Unity (1914-1948) became Hitler’s most infamous fangirl. Her love for the Führer was both appalling and sincere. It’s said that her ‘desire to shock’ drew her to supporting the British Union of Fascists and the Nazi Party.
Diana and Unity, ‘friends of the Führer,’ pictured in The Tatler, 18 March 1936.
While in Germany in 1934, it’s said she was almost obsessive about wanting to meet Hitler. After finally orchestrating a meeting with him, she quickly became part of his inner circle.
When Britain declared war on Germany, a distraught Unity turned a gun on herself in a Munich park with a gun Hitler had given her.
News of Unity’s injuries, reported in the Liverpool Echo, 2 January 1940.
In a later interview, Diana said:
"She [Unity] told me that if there was a war, which of course we all terribly hoped there might not be, that she would kill herself because she couldn't bear to live and see these two countries tearing each other to pieces, both of which she loved."
She lived, though never wholly again, her brain damaged, her mind fragmented. Her family tucked her away on a remote Scottish isle until her death from meningitis, caused by her injury, in 1948.
Who was Jessica Mitford?
‘Decca’ (1917-1996) was the family rebel. She ran off to fight fascism in the Spanish Civil War, later planting her roots in America.
Jessica Mitford as an 18-year-old debutante, pictured in The Queen, 29 May 1935.
After losing her first husband in the Second World War, she rebuilt her life as a crusading writer and unapologetic communist. Her razor-sharp exposé The American Way of Death sliced into the funeral industry, and her passion for justice became her legacy.
Who was Deborah Mitford?
And finally, there was Deborah (1920-2014), the youngest, known as ‘Nine’, a nickname from Nancy: half-affection, half-insult.
Deborah on her wedding day with Lord Andrew Cavendish of the Coldstream Guards, the future Duke of Devonshire, pictured in The Sketch, 30 April 1941.
She married the future Duke of Devonshire and breathed life into Chatsworth House, transforming it from a crumbling relic into a gilded empire of tourism and tradition. Deb, unlike her sisters, never sought the headlines.
These glamorous, flawed, but fascinating siblings still turn heads today, and it's no wonder their story is now on the small screen for all to see. But at the end of the day, they were a family.
Our own families might not make the headlines every week, but there's still joy, heartache, scandal, and betrayal to be found in the pages of history. What could you find when you delve deeper?
