Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets

Blue Bloods in Black Shirts

But while Mussolini's star was on the rise, it claimed some strange followers. One of the strangest was carried away, with thousands of other old people, in the unusually long, hot summer of 2003—Diana Mitford. She was the woman who married Oswald Mosley, and at their wedding in 1936 were some of the most important people of the age, notably Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels.²

Of all the stupidities into which a man can fall, the stupidity that Oswald Mosley launched headlong into was one that was especially vile. With money supplied by Mussolini, he organized Britain's “Blackshirts,” an organization much like the Nazis in Germany. National Socialism was supposed to be the wave of the future, but Mosley's group couldn't seem to come up with anything more original than going into London's East End and beating up Jews. Most Englishmen were appalled. When World War II broke out, the Mosleys were interned as security risks. Though they were set free after the war was over, they were told to get out of town. They then joined their best friends, the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh, in France, where they lived out their remaining days. Diana herself lasted into her 90s.

Diana was not only smart; she was among the world's great beauties. She was said to be the prettiest of the Mitford sisters, which was tough competition, and even in her 90s, she posed for Vogue magazine and she still looked good. She was “the most divine adolescent I have ever beheld: a goddess, ...