“Diana echoed the same sentiments she had once told the crestfallen James Lees-Milne – monogamy was pointless and unrealistic.”*

*from Mrs Guinness: The Rise and Fall of Diana Mitford, the Thirties Socialite, by Lyndsy Spence. The History Press, 2 Mar 2015.

Alan Patient of http://www.plaquesoflondon.co.uk:

“Inscription

HUJUSCE AEDIFICII
PRIMUM LAPIDEM POSUIT
VIR HONORATISSIMUS UICECOMES MILTON
PRID ID MAII MDCCCXXX
OUOD OPUS SUSCEPTUM AD PUERORUM INSTITUTIONEM
CHRISTI FIDE MORIEUS ARTIBUS AC LITERIS
SPIRITUS SACROSANCTUS SECUNDET

{Translated from the Latin:}
The Right Honourable Viscount Milton laid the first stone of this building on 14 May 1830. May the Holy Spirit direct this task, undertaken for the instruction of boys in Christ’s faith and moral and literary arts.

Designed by J. P. Gandy-Deering in 1830 as a non-conformist school in what was then known as Watkins Place. It later housed the Pimlico Literary Institution. In about 1930 the building was divided into 4 flats, now called ‘studios’. ‘Ian Fleming’ by Andrew Lycett says that Fleming took over the lease of 22b from Sir Oswald Mosley. This was the top half of the “chapel like interior”. He moved in c.1936.”

London Remembers:

“Architect was J.P. Gandy Deering. The British Museum’s drawing is from 1832. Built as a non-conformist private academy for boys but the school only lasted a few years.

‘Ian Fleming’ by Andrew Lycett refers to this building as, in c.1930, the Pimlico Literary Institution, but images for that, in 1861, show a quite different and much larger building so we think Lycett is mistaken. But we don’t know what the Grammar School building was used for once the school folded. Certainly in the Victorian period its wings were enlarged upwards by two storeys and a number of windows were added to the front elevation.”

From Nancy Mitford (1985), by Selina Hastings:

“…Then, in November 1932, this miserable affair was dramatically overshadowed by a family scandal: Diana had walked out on her husband, Bryan Guinness, publicly acknowledging that she was in love with another man, the prominent politician, Sir Oswald Mosley. Sir Oswald was married and there was no question of his leaving his wife;

“Mosley had launched the British Union of Fascists in the autumn of 1932, the year he and Diana had met. His wife, Cimmie (Cynthia, daughter of Lord Curzon), died in May of the following year, which meant that he and Diana could now plan to marry, as soon as the cumbersome process of her divorce from Bryan Guinness was complete.”
.

but he and Diana had committed themselves to each other. Diana knew that here was the man to whom she wanted to dedicate the rest of her life. She must leave Bryan, ‘nail her colours to the mast’, as she put it, and keep herself free to see Mosley whenever he could spare the time from his family and from the increasing demands of his political career.
The Redesdales were beside themselves with shock and dismay. It was unthinkable that a daughter of theirs, only twenty-two, the mother of two boys, should walk out of an apparently perfect marriage to be the mistress of a much older man, a notorious womaniser, with a wife and three children of his own.
Farve, with Bryan’s father, Lord Moyne, went round to see Mosley at his flat in Ebury Street to try and talk him out of it, but Mosley was inflexible. Diana, too, was deaf to argument: she had made up her mind, and the opinion of the world and of her family was a matter of indifference. Nancy, always on the side of love, was sympathetic, but at the same time tried to warn her sister of the consequences of her scandalous behaviour. ‘Your social position will be nil if you do this. Darling I do hope you are making a right decision. You are so young to begin getting in wrong with the world, if thats what is going to happen. However it is all your own affair & whatever happens I shall always be on your side as you know & so will anybody who cares for you & perhaps the rest really dont matter.’ Diana was grateful for Nancy’s support but so happy that she was almost indifferent to what was going on around her. In January she moved into a little house in Eaton Square, where Muv absolutely forbade the two youngest girls to go; had she been able, she would have prevented the family having any contact with her at all. Nancy saw Diana almost daily, keeping her in touch with events in the enemy camp. ‘Saw Bryan yesterday, he was pretty spiky I thought, keeps saying of course I suppose its my duty to take her back & balls of that sort … I may say that the Lambs seem to have turned nasty, apparently they told B they were nearly certain you had an affair with Randolph in the spring.’”

From Diana Mosley (2014), by Jan Dalley:

“Diana was well organized. She moved into a house at
2 Eaton Square, a fashionable address and only a few minutes’ walk from Mosley’s Ebury Street flat. It was ‘small’ by her standards, but it had several storeys and a basement – space for servants and nurseries, if no room for entertaining on the scale she was used to. There was a shortage of tenants for such places during the slump years, and the landlords gave it to her for a token rent, and added a grant to do necessary repairs. She installed herself there with Jonathan and Desmond (aged two and one) and Nanny Higgs, as well as a nursery maid, her ladies’ maid, a cook, a housemaid and a manservant – a very much reduced household, by comparison. Bryan gave her the furniture from Cheyne Walk, while he kept everything at Biddesden. Mosley gave her a car, which she garaged in the mews behind Eaton Square for nine shillings a week. So she established herself publicly as Mosley’s mistress. She always claimed she did not expect to marry him; he was devoted to his wife and children, and to his political work: she would be there for him whenever he had time to spare.
Her friends told her she was mad, and predicted disaster. Her family was scandalized, and the three younger sisters were strictly forbidden by Muv and Farve to set foot in ‘the Eatonry’, as Diana’s new house was dubbed. ‘The whole of London’ was savouring the scandal…”

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