Name Nicholas Mosley | Role Novelist | |
 | ||
Parents Lady Cynthia Mosley, Oswald Mosley Siblings Max Mosley, Oswald Alexander Mosley, Vivien Mosley, Michael Mosley Grandparents George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston Movies Accident, The Assassination of Trotsky Books Hopeful Monsters, Impossible Object, Catastrophe practice, Julian Grenfell, Efforts at truth Similar People | ||
Nicholas Mosley, 3rd Baron Ravensdale, 7th Baronet, MC FRSL (25 June 1923 – 28 February 2017) was an English novelist.
Contents
Life
Mosley was born in London in 1923. He was the eldest son of Sir Oswald Mosley, 6th Baronet, an English politician and his first wife, Lady Cynthia Mosley, a daughter of George Nathaniel Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (Viceroy of India and Foreign Secretary). In 1932 his father, Sir Oswald Mosley, founded the British Union of Fascists and became an open supporter of Benito Mussolini. In 1933, when he was only ten, Nicholas Mosley's mother, Lady Cynthia, died and in 1936 Diana Mitford, one of the Mitford sisters, who was already his father's mistress, became his stepmother.
As a young boy, Mosley began to stammer and attended weekly sessions with the speech therapist Lionel Logue to help him to overcome this disorder. He later said his father claimed never really to have noticed this stammer, but despite this he may, as a result of it, have been less aggressive when speaking to him than he was towards other people. Mosley was educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford. In 1940 his father was interned because of his campaigning against the war with Germany. Despite this the younger Mosley was soon commissioned into the Rifle Brigade and saw active service in Italy, winning the Military Cross in 1945.
In 1966 Mosley succeeded his aunt Irene Curzon, 2nd Baroness Ravensdale, his mother's elder sister, as Baron Ravensdale, thus gaining a seat in the House of Lords. On the death of his father on 3 December 1980 he also succeeded to his father's baronetcy. In 1999 he lost his seat in parliament as a result of House of Lords reform. In 1983, after his father's death, Mosley published Beyond the Pale: Sir Oswald Mosley and Family 1933–1980, in which he proved to be a harsh critic of his father, calling into question his motives and even his understanding of politics. This book contributed to the Channel 4 television programme Mosley (1998), based on Oswald Mosley's life. At the end of this serial, Mosley is portrayed meeting his father in prison to ask him about his national allegiance. Mosley lived in London. He was a half-brother of Max Mosley, former President of the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA).
Marriages and children
Mosley married twice and was the father of five children. On 14 November 1947 he married firstly Rosemary Laura Salmond (divorced 1974, died 1991), daughter of Sir John Maitland Salmond and the Hon. Monica Margaret Grenfell, and they had four children:
In 1974, after a divorce, Mosley married secondly Verity Elizabeth Raymond, daughter of John Raymond, and had one son: