Grandiose ambition: Mosley, pictured here in 1936, held sway over sections of working- and upper-class Britain long after the end of the war. Photograph: William Davis/Hulton/Getty Images.
Researching the position of the New Statesmanon the Cuban missile crisis, I came across a paragraph in a London Diary about Oswald Mosley written by Malcolm Muggeridge in August 1962. He had just interviewed the former British fascist leader for BBC Television and his impressions were dismissive:
“He struck me as being an earnest, rather humourless man; a bit of a bore, but in no way abhorrent; just rather dreary, like a Jehovah’s Witness, or one of those figures one meets in out-of-the-way places who produce a cyclostyled plan for world government which they have sent to Adlai Stevenson, Mrs Roosevelt and the late Duchess of Atholl.”
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“Ah,” she said and, after a pause: “Would you like a swim?” She pressed a bell under her foot and summoned Jerry. “Please bring a pair of Sir Oswald’s swimming trunks. They will fit Mr Purcell.”
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