Unity Mitford Collection

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Unity Valkyrie Mitford, born 8 August 1914, was a British socialite. Renowned for her relationship with Adolf Hitler. Both in Great Britain and Germany, she was a prominent supporter of Nazism, fascism and antisemitism, and belonged to Hitler's inner circle. Unity was a member of the Mitford family, an aristocratic family tracing its origins in Northumberland back to the 11th-century Norman settlement of England. She was the fifth of seven children to David Freeman-Mitford, 2nd Baron Redesdale, and his wife, Lady Sydney Redesdale. Her sister Diana left her husband to pursue an affair with Oswald Mosley, 6th Baronet, and leader of the British Union of Fascists. They eventually married in 1936. She attempted suicide in Munich on 3rd September 1939, the day Britain and France declared war on Germany. She shot herself and was taken seriously ill on a visit to the family-owned island of Inch Kenneth when she was taken to hospital in Oban. Doctors had decided it was too dangerous to remove the bullet in her head. On 28 May 1948, Mitford died of meningitis caused by the cerebral swelling around the bullet. She was buried at Swinbrook Churchyard.