The Pursuit of Laughter (80 page)

She uses the old-fashioned ‘coat’ for jacket. To-day Diana herself is wearing a white
polo-neck sweater and a black wool suit with jet, brass-ringed buttons. Was Givency her favoured couturier?

‘Yes. Balenciaga was greater but he was long beyond my purse—
very
expensive—but I had heaps of secondhand things by him and used to parade very successfully in those.’

‘So Givenchy was less expensive?’

‘Yes, Givenchy had a boutique. I never bought clothes from what they call upstairs which was the expensive part. But in the boutique you could choose something and they’d give you a fitting or even two. Debo had heaps of things from him and I had quite a few and do you know I
still
wear them, they haven’t dated at all. If I put on something Hubert has made I always feel in the
height
of fashion.’

‘Well, you are. All these Mitford books and Mosley books. It’s getting out of hand. And there’s a new biography of your second husband coming. The author says that, contrary to what was always claimed, the British Fascists
did
receive funding from the Nazis before the war—and that the courier of the money was you.’

‘What we did do was try to set up this commercial radio station in Germany, but the war put a stop to that. As for the money I am supposed to have carried from Berlin to the British Union of Fascists, it’s just another lie. It’s such luck I am still alive because I can swear to its untruth. If I were dead, as most people are at my age, who could be certain?’

A Life of Contrasts
Diana Mosley

The Duchess of Windsor
Diana Mosley

Nancy Mitford
Harold Acton