DIANA MOSELEY'S POLITICS are objectionable to many people. She was an anti-Semite and a Fascist. She was on Hitler's side in the Second World War and, until her dying day, 11 August this year, would not say a word against him. Her view was that he had an enormous amount of personal charm, that he had a good basic plan, and that in the process of its execution people were bound to .g, et knocked about a bit. Six million. she thought, was a gross exaggeration of the number of Jews exterminated at that time: Winston Churchill had betrayed his country by launching a totally unnecessary war against Germany, and England would have been better off under the dictatorship of her husband, Sir Oswald Mosley. Not many people agree with these ideas nowadays, but I still found it odd that Anne de Courcy, in the opening sentence of her preface, should feel the need to state: 'Although I came to love Diana Mosley personally, I abhorred her politics.'

Is it normal for a biographer to start out by saying she hates the tastes of her subject? Perhaps Diana Mosley is an extreme example. To open a biography of, say, Hans Richter with