She and Mosley were imprisoned without trial during the Second World War, their loyalty in doubt. The marriage was kept secret: a by-product of this was that Diana’s younger sisters still couldn’t visit her – although she was now theoretically respectable, people didn’t KNOW she was, so the sisters still had to be kept away from the imaginary taint. Mosley’s wife died unexpectedly, and the happy couple were now able to marry, in a ceremony at the Goebbels’ house in Berlin attended by Hitler. She theoretically stepped outside society: although she could not live with her beloved, the sin was overt. (He was already married, and still had feasible political ambitions, so could not get divorced.) Guinness plainly adored her – there exists a deeply unhappy letter he wrote to her to try to persuade her not to leave him. But she left her husband for fascist leader Oswald Mosley – even though at that time there would have seemed no chance that he would ever be able to marry her. She had two sons, and must have seemed to have the perfect life: rich, beautiful, desired, everything at her feet. At 18 she married Bryan Guinness, heir to the brewing fortune - she is the original of this favourite anecdote: she was fiddling with her veil, prior to her huge society wedding into one of the richest families in the UK, herself an Hon, and her Nanny said ‘don’t worry darling, no-one will be looking at YOU’. She knew everyone in the 1930s, and was greatly loved, and desired: many claim her as a muse or inspiration.
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