A fascinating insight into 30s Britiain - Rated 
I was fascinated by this as I had no idea of the life and antics of Oswald Moseley and his behaviour towards his family. Irene turns out to be the much maligned sister and Baba's relationship with her brother-in-law is still mysterious. I was left at the end feeling that there was a lot more about her, her relationship with Tom and about Viv, Nicky and Micky, Cimmie's children that I wanted to know more about.
The sordid, selfish reality behind the glitz. - Rated 
...This is a hugely entertaining tale of of an upper strata of society utterly convinced of its own worth and superiority. The viceroy's daughters were at its core and many the major characters of the era figure in the story. The insights into their lives are fascinating and are vividly described. Sir Oswald Mosley, the fascist leader who married one of the daughters, for example, was a serial adulterer with minmal concern or interest in his own children. The book describes the travails, adventures, virtues and vices of the daughters with a pace that never flags. An added, and major bonus, is a highly diverting early section on their fascinating father. The view behind the glitz often reveals appalling behaviour but there are also examples of self sacrifice and commitment to others. This is an enthralling and balanced account of a vanished era. Telling the tale through the lives of three women who were at its core works brilliantly.
This book is simply delightful which gave hours of pleasure. - Rated
I thought that this book was a complete delight to read as it gave me insight to what actually happened during the first forty years of the last century. I would highly recommend this as an excellent read.
Could have been fun but ruined by shoddy writing and editing - Rated 
After reading Curzon's latest biog and various Mitford sisters' books in this genre, I was looking forward to some more biography-lite. Sadly the editing is so bad that almost every paragraph is nonsensical, repeats what has already been said, or omits to introduce people and events not mentioned earlier. Simple things like achronyms (NUPE, NUPA) are not spelt out, yet one is constantly reminded that so-and-so had an affair with so-and-so. A lot of detail is trite while important events (pregancies or political developments) suddenly arrive unannounced and with little background explanation (desirable at least in the case of the political events!) Buy it only if you know some of the people involved personally (for the gossip). If not, don't waste your time or your money.
Readable, intimate, sympathetic account of Ld Curzon's 3gels - Rated 
In the realm of sibling biography the Mitford sisters have long held the floor while the Curzon sisters sat it out; safely aloof and largely unknown. Endowed with their diaries and letters - and the blessing of their sons and nephews - Anne de Courcy has turned the spotlight on to Irene, Cynthia ('Cimmie'), and Alexandra ('Baba') Curzon for almost a century from Irene's birth in 1896 until Baba's death in 1995. Through their parents and partners, the sisters' lives span and intimately intersect the world of the Souls, the Raj, the Abdication, the British Fascists, the Cliveden Set, and the Dorchester clique during the Blitz. Lord Kitchener and Winston Churchill, George V and Lloyd George, Elinor Glyn and Nancy Astor, Dino Grandi and Jock Whitney, Lord Halifax and Walter Monckton, the Mitfords and the Windsors all appear and make their mark. While Miss de Courcy manages to focus on the three girls, two particular men bestride the pages and dominate their lives. The first is their father, George, Marquess Curzon of Kedelston - Viceroy of India, and British Foreign Secretary. He was brilliant, energetic, passionate, ambitious and vain, obsessed with pomp and ceremony, a strict and distant father who used his wife's enormous wealth and (after her early death) his daughters', to acquire and restore great houses and surround himself with all the luxuries of a potentate. By the time of his death, in 1925, another colossus had entered the lives of his daughters - Oswald Mosley, known as 'Tom', a gifted, flashy, flawed baronet and politician. Although photographs of the young Mosley make him look like a slightly absurd early Hollywood villain, his magnetism and libido were such that, apart from Cimmie, whom he wed, he bedded both Irene and Baba, as well as their step-mother! He hopped from bed to bed until he found the most beautiful of the Mitford sisters, Diana Guinness; he also jumped from party to party - from Tory, to Labour, to New - until he found Fascism. Within a year, Cimmie died of a burst appendix and, according to her sisters, a broken heart. By then Baba was married to Fruity Metcalfe, the Prince of Wales' best friend and, when the Duke of Windsor, his best man. This did not prevent Baba becoming Mosley's lover while Irene became a mother to his children. A pattern was set for the rest of their lives: Baba took a succession of lovers, invariably eminent men of influence and wealth; while Irene, the eternal aunt, suffered a series of unsuitable suitors, finding herself in travel, her charges and good works and losing herself in the bottle. Anne de Courcy, the biographer of the legendary between-the-wars political hostess, Circe, Marchioness of Londonderry, is very much at home with the lives of the British aristocracy. She has made deft use of Irene and Baba's diaries and all three sisters' letters, which so vividly express their rivalry and rows, their disappointments and despair, their jealousies and joys. Some diary entires, however, are plumbed too far - that Lady Ravensdale had piles in 1932 is more than one needs to know. Detailed descriptions of fashions and furniture may delight some readers as they enrich the text with a period flavour; for others there may just be too much marble, gilt and Worth, too many silver fox furs and candlesticks. The Viceroy's Daughters is not as elegant as Nigel Nicolson's biography of their mother Mary Curzon, nor as scintillating as Superior Person, Kenneth Rose's early life of their father, nor as riveting as James Fox's brilliant biography of his grandmother and great-aunts, The Langhorne Sisters; but it can be commended as a very readable, intimate, and sympathetic account of three sisters' lives at the epicentre of a glamorous elite in the first half of twentieth century Britain. Mark McGinness
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