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Diana Mosley - The last bright young thing

AS Diana Mitford she was the most glamorous of her famous family. As Diana Guinness she was at the centre of Twenties society. And as Diana Mosley, through her fascist husband and friendship with Hitler, she became a pariah.

After being imprisoned for three and a half years during the Second World War she and Oswald Mosley moved to France, where she remained until her death last week at the age of 92. In her final interviews, she told Duncan Fallowell about her extraordinary life

T IS spring 2002. Her flat is in the Septième district, the Mayfair of Paris, on a corner overlooking a large garden with grass and trees. There are French windows on two sides and the sunshine makes patches on Empire cabinets and comfortable sofas. A tall, slim, upright woman, dressed in beige wool, brown suede shoes, and pearl earrings is walking towards me with hands outstretched. "Have you come all the way from Saint Tropez?" "No, from London."

"You must be so tired."

"No, I came on Friday evening."

"How clever. What will you have to drink?"

She has a wide smile, which seeps upwards into soft, eau-de-Nil blue eyes. And she's full-on. Can this really be Diana Mosley, 92 years old this year, once the most beautiful woman in England, then the most amusing, the most notorious, and eventually the most hated? More than 50 years of exile in Paris don't seem to have done her a great deal of harm. Once upon a time everyone knew the outline of her story. But fewer do these days, so here it is again. She began as a Mitford, sister to Nancy, Jessica, Debo, Unity, Pam, Tom. At the age of 18 she married rich Bryan Guinness, and they became the star couple of the late 1920s and early 1930s. Evelyn Waugh described their milieu in his second novel, Vile Bodies, which he finished while staying with them in Bryan's parents' flat at 12 rue de Poitiers - only a couple of streets from where we are today. Waugh dedicated the novel to them both, "with love", then promptly fell out with Diana and didn't talk to her again for 25 years.

friendship with Magda Goebbels (left), who was the first lady of the Third Reich, Hitler being unmarried. Mosley and Hitler didn't click (this was one of only two occasions they ever met).