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Bright young things ,rex whistler and friends and unloved old queens

Rex Whistlerwas born in Eltham, Kent, the son of Henry and Helen Frances Mary Whistler. He was sent to board at Haileybury in May 1919 where he showed a precocious talent for art, providing set designs for play productions and giving away sketches to prefects in lieu of "dates" (a punishment at Haileybury, similar to "lines" whereby offenders are required to write out set lists of historical dates).

After Haileybury the young Whistler was accepted at the Royal Academy but disliked the regime there and was "sacked for incompetence". He then proceeded to study at the Slade School of Art where he met The Honourable Stephen Tennant, soon to become one of his best friends and a model for some of the figures in his works. 

A painting, by Reginald John (Rex) Whistler, aged 16. Six years later, in 1927,  he completed perhaps his most famous work, the murals in the restaurant of Tate Britain.In Brighton he is famous for "HRH the Prince Regent Awakening the Spirit of Brighton", 1944. This hangs upstairs in the Royal Pavilion and was the centre piece of a major exhibition in Brighton Art Gallery in 2006, "Rex Whistler: The Triumph of Fancy". It was originally painted on the wall of a house in Preston Park Avenue where Rex Whistler was stationed during WW2.

Through Tennant, he later met the poet Siegfried Sassoon an English poet, author and soldier.Sassoon, Decorated for bravery on the Western Front,  became one of the leading poets of the First World War. His poetry both described the horrors of the trenches, and satirised the patriotic pretensions of those who, in Sassoon's view, were responsible for a vainglorious war.Another  person Whistler knew was Evelyn waugh I n 1907 the Waugh family left Hillfield Road for "Underhill", "Underhill" a house which Arthur Waugh the father had had built in  Golders Green, then a semi-rural area of dairy farms, market gardens and bluebell woods.Evelyn received his first lessons at home from his mother, with whom he formed a particularly close relationship—Arthur Waugh was a more distant figure, whose bond with his elder son Alec was such that Evelyn often felt excluded. In September 1910 Evelyn began as a day pupil at Heath Mount preparatory school. . Waugh  on his own assertion he was "quite a clever little boy", who was seldom distressed or overawed by his lessons.

 Physically pugnacious, he was inclined to bully weaker boys; among his victims was the (below whistlers tate cafe)future society photographer Cecil Beaton, who never forgot the experience.Waugh was a bully with others he saw in weaker positions than himself, such as waiters, he found it difficult toactually get into eateries..

Outside school, Waugh and other children in the neighbourhood performed dramatic works usually written by him.^[ On the basis of a belief then being fostered in the press that the Germans were about to invade England, he organised his friends into a gang called "The Pistol Troop", which built a fort, went on manoeuvres and paraded in makeshift uniforms. After the First World War broke out in 1914, Waugh and other boys from Heath Mount's Boy Scout troop were sometimes employed at the War Office as messengers. He hung about in the corridors hoping to get a glimpse of Lord Kitchener, but never did. Family holidays were usually spent with the Waugh aunts at Midsomer Norton, in a house lit by oil lamps that Waugh recalled with delight many years later. At Midsomer Norton he became deeply interested in high Anglican church rituals—the first stirrings of the spiritual dimension that would later dominate his life—and served as an altar boy at the local Anglican church.The term "High Church" refers to beliefs and practices of ecclesiology, liturgy and theology, generally with an emphasis on formality, and resistance to "modernization." Although used in connection with various Christian traditions, the term has traditionally been principally associated with the Anglican tradition.(below whistlers beaton)

^{The term is often used to describe Anglican churches using a number of ritual practices associated in the popular mind with Roman Catholicism. Sacrosanctum Concilium states that: "in the earthly liturgy we take part in a foretaste of the heavenly liturgy",having to do with sanctity and respect for God, Jesus, and the church as the Body of Christ. As such high church Anglicans espouse a position that the church as an organisation and the congregation at worship is "catholic" primarily in the sense that it is joined through its ritual to the "universal" church, and so they use the terms "High Church" and "Anglo-Catholic"} During his last year at Heath Mount Waugh devised and edited a school magazine, The Cynic.Alec Waugh, like his father, had gone to school at Sherborne, and it was assumed that Evelyn would follow. However, in 1915 Alec was asked to leave, after a homosexual relationship came to light. He departed for military training, and while waiting for his commission to be confirmed wrote a novel of school life, The Loom of Youth, which was published by Chapman and Hall.Would Evelyn and Alastair Graham his lover have been quite as warm with each other at the back porch of Underhill as Evelyn and John Greenidge (playing the Prince of Wales in The Scarlet Woman) are in the film? I think they would have been. But who is that lurking in the background? Could it be Arthur Waugh, Evelyn’s father? If so, he may be observing to himself that it wasn’t just Alec, his favourite son, who was gay, but both his talented children.

From waugh's diary

‘I arrived home to find a wire from Alastair asking me to meet him for dinner at the Previtali. We had a quiet and pleasant dinner and wandered down by way of many pubs to the Embankment and back in the same manner to the Café Royal. Soon we were joined by the foul Tasha Gielgud and in her company a pert young woman dressed almost wholly as a man. They had many drinks with us and attracted a great deal of attention. We managed in the end to get rid of them only by leaving the restaurant ourselves and putting them to lesbianise in a taxi.’T

‘Alastair’s birthday. He came out to Golders Green for luncheon and dinner and slept here for the night.’Saturday 28 June,1924  
‘Alastair and I spent the day at Paddington Station drinking and eating buns and watching trains. We went to the Stoll cinema (above) and came home to dinner. At about 11 we went for a walk and lost ourselves. A very remarkable thing occurred. God took away Parliament Hill entirely for some time; it was very puzzling. When we came home Alastair cooked an omelette which tasted remarkably and looked like a buttered egg.’Sunday 29 June,1924  

‘Alastair and I went to the church of the emigrés in Buckingham Palace Road. I like the Russian service enormously. 
Wednesday 25 June 1924
‘I called for Alastair at about 11 and went with him through the heart breaking business of ordering his passage to Africa.’Thursday 26 June 1924

‘I did, I think, nothing."
He wrote a novel, which alluded to homosexual friendships in what was recognisably Sherborne, caused a public sensation and offended the school sufficiently to make it impossible for Evelyn to go there. Much to his annoyance he was sent in May 1917 to Lancing, in his view a decidedly inferior establishment.(tennant)

Waugh soon overcame his initial aversion to the school and settled down. He began to establish a reputation as an aesthete, and in November 1917 had an essay "In Defence of Cubism" accepted by the arts magazine Drawing and Design—his first published article.
Within the school he became mildly subversive, mocking the school's cadet corps and founding the Corpse Club "for those who were weary of life".The end of the war saw the return to the school of younger masters such as J. F. Roxburgh, who encouraged Waugh to write and predicted a great future for him.
A biography of Roxburgh (who went on to be first headmaster of Stowe School) was the last 

In his later years at Lancing, Waugh achieved conventional success, . He also shed most of his religious beliefs. He started a novel of school life, untitled, but after around 5,000 words the attempt was abandoned. He ended his schooldays by winning a scholarship to Hertford College, Oxford, and left Lancing in December 1921.^]

Upon leaving the Slade he burst into a dazzling career as a professional artist. His work encompassed all areas of art and design. From the West End theatre to book illustration (including works by Evelyn Waugh , Waugh served in the British armed forces throughout the Second World War, first in the Royal Marines and later in the Royal Horse Guards. All these experiences, and the wide range of people he encountered, were used in Waugh's fiction, generally to humorous effect; even his own mental breakdown in the early 1950s, brought about by misuse of drugs, was fictionalisedAfter attending Sherborne School and New College, Oxford, Arthur Waugh began a career in publishing and as a literary critic. In 1902 he became managing director of Chapman and Hall, publishers of the works of Charles Dickens.^[ He had married Catherine Raban (1870–1954) in 1893; their first son Alexander Raban Waugh (always known as Alec) was born on 8 July 1898. Alec Waugh later became a novelist of note. At the time of his birth the family were living in North London, at Hillfield Road, West Hampstead where, on 28 October 1903,Waugh was born.  HE arrived in Oxford in January 1922. He was soon writing to old friends at Lancing about the pleasures of his new life; he informed Tom Driberg: "I do no work here and never go to Chapel". During his first two terms he generally followed convention; 

The arrival in Oxford in October 1922 of Harold Acton and Brian Howard changed Waugh's Oxford life whose artistic, social and homosexual values Waugh adopted enthusiastically;  and embarked on the first of several homosexual relationships, the most lasting of which were with Richard Pares and Alastair Graham.

Waugh's dissipated lifestyle continued into his final Oxford year, 1924. , a poor final result which led to the loss of his scholarship. , so he left without a degree.he began a novel and worked  on a film, The Scarlet Woman, which was shot partly in the gardens at Underhill. He spent much of the rest of the summer in the company of Alastair Graham; after Graham departed for Kenya.  He spent weeks partying in London and Oxford before the overriding need for money led him to apply through an agency for a teaching job. Almost at once he secured a post at Arnold House, a boys' preparatory school in North Wales, beginning in January 1925. He took with him the notes for his novel, The Temple at Thatch, intending to work on it in his spare time. Despite the gloomy ambience of the school, Waugh did his best to fulfil the requirements of his position, but a brief return to London and Oxford during the Easter vacation only exacerbated his sense of isolation.(Stephen tennant one of the bright young things see new post)

In the summer of 1925 Waugh's outlook briefly improved, with the prospect of a job in Pisa as secretary to the Scottish writer Charles Scott Moncrieffwho was engaged on the English translations of Proust's works. Believing that the job was his, Waugh resigned his position at Arnold House. He had meantime sent the early chapters of his novel to Acton for assessment and criticism. Acton's reply was coolly dismissive, so that Waugh immediately burnt his manuscript; shortly afterwards, before he had left North Wales, he received the news that the Moncrieff job had fallen through.These twin blows were sufficient for him to consider suicide. He records that he went down to a nearby beach and, leaving a note with his clothes, walked out to sea. An attack by jellyfish changed his mind, and he returned quickly to the shore.The sea incident showed a hollowness of character that had to be resovled

During the following two years Waugh taught at schools in Aston Clinton (whistlers master cook)(from which he was dismissed for the attempted drunken seduction of a school matron) and Notting Hill, but as a homosexual this might well not have been the case and he may have got out of it easier than the whole truth but who know something more (below Whistler drawing)

A short story, "The Balance", written in an experimental modernist style, became his first commercially published fiction  Having given up teaching, he had no regular employment except for a short, unsuccessful stint as a reporter on the Daily Express in April–May 1927. That year he met (possibly through brother Alec) and fell in love with Evelyn Gardner, the daughter of Lord and Lady Burghclere.In December 1927 Waugh and Evelyn Gardner became engaged, despite the opposition of Lady Burghclere who felt that Waugh lacked moral fibre and kept unsuitable company. Among their friends they quickly became known as "He-Evelyn" and "She-Evelyn". Less pleasing to Waugh was the Times Literary Supplement's references to him as "Miss Waugh".h

 Decline and Fall was completed, Duckworth objected to its "obscenity", but Chapman and Hall agreed to publish it.This was sufficient for Waugh and Evelyn Gardner to bring forward their wedding plans. The couple made their home in a small flat in Canonbury Square, Islington.

In September 1928 Decline and Fall was published to almost unanimous praise. By December the book was into its third printing, and the American publishing rights had been sold for $500. She-Evelyn revealed that their mutual friend, John Heygate, had become her lover, an admission that shocked and dismayed Waugh. a new hardness and bitterness"was in Waugh's outlook. He finished his second novel,Vile Bodies,and wrote articles including (ironically he thought) one for the Daily Mail on the meaning of the marriage ceremony. his new book was

 dark, bitter, "a manifesto of disillusionment", he quickly wrote Labels, a detached account of his honeymoon cruise with She-EvelynOn 29 September 1930 Waugh was received into the Roman Catholic Church. On 22 December 1925  On 10 October 1930 Waugh, representing several newspapers, departed for Abyssinia to cover the coronation of Haile Selassie. He reported the event as "an elaborate propaganda effort" to convince the world that Abyssinia was a civilised nation, concealing the truth that the emperor had achieved power through barbarous means A subsequent journey through the British East Africa colonies and the Belgian Congo formed the basis of two books; the travelogue Remote People (1931) and the comic novel Black Mischief (1932). Waugh's next extended trip, in the winter of 1932–33, was to British Guiana (now Guyana) in South America, possibly taken to distract him from a long and unrequited passion for the socialite Teresa Jungman.

The Jungman sisters were virtually unique. They were iconic figures of the 1920s, and will forever be associated with the ‘Bright Young People’, whose antics caused such controversy in society in London in the 1920s, just as the Sitwells are identified with the intelligentsia of the period. Sacheverell Sitwell loved Zita, and Evelyn Waugh tried to marry Teresa. The sisters belonged to a world that is already consigned to the pages of literary and social history.  Equally fascinating is the fact that from 1930 onwards they attracted no publicity whatever. They never gave interviews, they rarely helped biographers, and yet they made one brief but extraordinarily memorable    appearance on British television. For most of their lives they lived together in perfect harmony in a succession of cottages in England and latterly in Ireland. They both lived to be 102. Zita died in 2006 and     Rex Whistler. Next row: Stephen Tennant, Captain Crichton, Joan Churston (later Princess Joan Aly Khan and Viscountess Camrose). Front row: Tanis Guinness (later Phillips), Zita Jungman, and Loelia Ponsonby (later Duchess of Westminster). Photographed by Cecil Beaton at Cap Ferrat on 2 March 1927. Teresa died a month short of her 103rd birthday. Teresa (often nicknamed 'Baby' to her intense dislike) was the last survivor from Cecil Beaton's Book of Beauty, published in 1930.

 On 

It was said that from the moment the Jungman sisters escaped the nursery, they were determined to enjoy life. Their joie de vivre found an outlet in treasure hunts, the first one taking place in 1923. This was a game devised by the sisters, originally involving eight girls. They pursued designated 'trophies' all over London, four couples competing. While the youngsters thought that they were simply having fun, the older generation was shocked to the core. One prank involved persuading Lord Beaverbrook to print a mock version of the Evening Standard with fake headlines and concealed clues. Eventually, treasure hunts became too popular, with Rolls-Royces jostling one another in small mewses and competitors fighting for the clues. They stopped them, though Elsa Maxwell later took up a version of them with some success. One night Zita and Lady Eleanor Smith hid in the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud's for a bet, to see if they could get through the night. They moved the waxworks of the Princes in the Tower from their bed in order to sleep there. They were considerably relieved when a night watchman found them and they could end their vigil.Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud's The sisters kept diaries. Zita's were filled with references to 'screaming' with laughter. In later life, she commented: 'We were all so over-excited. We were all talking about ourselves always.' Teresa’s mother liked to entertain, and she mixed actresses with society people, which was unusual at the time. She could be stern, and once obliged an embarrassed Teresa to attempt a solo Charleston in the presence of a male admirer. Despite this, Loelia Ponsonby (later Duchess of Westminster) thought Teresa and Zita 'gloriously emancipated'. At a party given by their mother in 1926, Cecil Beaton recalled tables groaning with caviar, oysters, paté, turkeys, kidneys and bacon, hot lobsters and meringues; the guests included Ivor Novello, Gladys Cooper, Tallulah Bankhead and Oliver Messel. Cecil Beaton was surprised that the sisters seemed to take their party for granted. They rushed about, having a good time, 'not looking at all excited at having such a glorious party.' In the early 1920s they teamed up with Lady Eleanor Smith, Loelia Ponsonby, Enid Raphael and others to become the 'Bright Young People', with their bottle parties, charades, and treasure hunts. When Beaton broke into this rarefied world in late 1926, the group found a photographer who could encapsulate them in romantic poses and publish the results in Vogue.  On one memorable occasion, Teresa pretended to be a newspaper reporter from a non-existent paper and interviewedBeverley Nichols at Claridge’s, while Zita and Lady Eleanor Smith hid under a table. As early as 1923 Teresa was involved in a prank, dressing up as a Russian refugee called 'Madame Anna Vorolsky'. She adorned herself in a black wig, Woolworth pearls and her mother’s mink coat, looking, in the words of Eleanor Smith, like 'a mixture of Pola Negri and Anna Sten'. Further armed with a casket of jewels from her mother’s Rolls-Royce, Teresa went about pretending that she had to sell the jewels to educate 'my little boy', spicing this with grim descriptions of the Red Terror. Beverley Nichols was again taken in, as was the 9th Duke of Marlborough, who some years later became one of Teresa’s suitors. She attended a garden party in the guise of Madame Vorolsky, with two Borzois in tow, and on meeting a distinguished general and his wife, told him that she would never forget the night she had spent with him in Paris. The general replied, somewhat sternly, that he had only spent one night in Paris during the war. 'Zat' said Teresa 'was zee night.' In the 1920s the two sisters lived similar lives. They were invited to the great houses of the day – to the Desboroughs at Taplow Court, and the Salisburys at Hatfield. Both eventually married.  Rex Whistler, Cecil Beaton, Georgia Sitwell, William Walton, Stephen Tennant, Teresa Jungman, and Zita Jungman. Photographed by Cecil Beaton (1927 or so). Zita's page boy beauty attracted Sacheverell Sitwell, the youngest of the three Sitwells, and also the playboy Italian diplomat, Mario Panza. Sachie Sitwell was already married to Georgia Doble when he fell for Zita, but neither his married state nor her ardent Catholicism deterred him. He pursued her in vain for some years. They had met at a party in 1926 and he thought she resembled a page in Tiepolo's Antony and Cleopatra. They met again staying with that aesthete of aesthetes, Stephen Tennant, at Wilsford Manor. Zita hoped to find a sympathetic confidant in Sachie, but was disappointed to find him too flippantly social. Nevertheless a Platonic friendship lasted between them for some years, not without jealousy from Georgia, who tried to promote a romance with Sachie's brother, Osbert, but he unfortunately soon settled down with David Horner. Sachie was terrified that Zita might tumble into a dreary marital alliance. Annoyed with Georgia in 1928, he wrote to her: 'My balmgiver, my golden tree, shake your curled hair ceaselessly …' Then Mario Panza arrived on the scene, but rather than marry him, she married Arthur James, a Yorkshireman and the maternal grandson of the 4th Duke of Wellington.  Zita was married on 29 January 1929, but the marriage was ill-fated from the start. Her mother and sister appeared on the honeymoon, which began at Leeds Castle, as later did William Walton (the composer) and Sachie Sitwell, convinced that she would soon tire of marriage to James, whom he deemed a dense man of little interest. He was right. She did not take to Yorkshire life. They were divorced in 1932. Teresa's fair-haired beauty likewise attracted numerous admirers, amongst themLord Margesson, the Conservative Chief Whip, Lord Ebury, of the older generation, Lord David Cecil, 'Bloggs' Baldwin (son of the Prime Minister) and Frank Pakenham, later 7th Earl of Longford (and father of Lady Antonia Fraser). Teresa was, however, very strict in her adherence to the Roman Catholic faith. Lord Longford was convinced that none of her admirers 'got anywhere with her sexually', and described her as 'more like a nun, like a very friendly and fascinating nun', he conceded. Her best-known suitor was Evelyn Waugh, who met her after his devastating separation from his first wife. But he never had a chance with her, since he had not then obtained his annulment, and therefore could not marry her. Waugh toldLady Diana Cooper that if he held Teresa’s hand for a while, a little warmth came into it; the moment he released the hand it went cold again. Waugh first met Teresa in 1930, and was deeply attracted to her — she, however, found him physically unattractive. She later claimed that she loved him, but was not in love with him. She wrote to him: 'It is hard to believe that you can’t see me without wanting to have an affair with me', and then, rather tantalisingly: 'If you weren’t married, you see, it would be different because I might or I might not want to marry you but I wouldn’t be quite sure'. In 1933, when Waugh thought that he was about to be free from his marriage, he proposed to Teresa, but was turned down flat. As he recorded: 'Was elated and popped question to Dutch girl [as he often called her] and got raspberry. So that is that, eh'. Some have suggested that Teresa might have inspired the heroine of Brideshead Revisited,Lady Julia Flyte. In facetious mood, Waugh claimed that every character in Work Suspended was based on her. Finally, in 1940, she married Graham Cuthbertson, a Scot who had been educated at Wellington and was then serving in a Canadian regiment. He arrived in Britain as a sergeant-major sporting a walrus moustache, and, to the horror of all Teresa’s old suitors, swept her off her feet. Lord Longford recalled that he and his friends thought him a bounder: 'He obviously had plenty of sexuality. Perhaps it needed someone like that to overcome Baby’s chasteness, which possibly he did not even notice.'

arrival in Georgetown, Waugh arranged a river trip by steam launch into the interior. He travelled on via several staging-posts to Boa Vista in Brazil, then took a convoluted overland journey back to Georgetown. His various adventures and encounters found their way into two further books: his travel account Ninety-two days, and the novel A Handful of Dust, both published in 1934.^[

Back from South America, Waugh faced accusations of obscenity and blasphemy from the Catholic journal The Tablet, which objected to passages in Black Mischief. He defended himself in an open letter to the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Francis Bourne. In the summer of 1934 he went on an expedition to Spitsbergen in the Arctic, an experience he did not enjoy and of which he made minimal literary use On his return, determined to write a major Catholic biography, he selected the Jesuit martyr Edmund Campion as his subject. The book, published in 1935, caused controversy through its forthright pro-Catholic, anti-Protestant stance but brought its writer the Hawthornden Prize.He returned to Abyssinia in August 1935, to report the opening stages of the Second Italo-Abyssinian War for the Daily Mail. Waugh, on the basis of his earlier visit, considered Abyssinia "a savage place which Mussolini was doing well to tame", according to his fellow-reporter William Deedes. Waugh saw little action, and was not wholly serious in his role as a war correspondent. Deedes remarks on the older writer's snobbery: "None of us quite measured up to the company he liked to keep back at home".However, in the face of imminent Italian air attacks, Deedes found Waugh's courage "deeply reassuring". Waugh wrote up his Abyssinian experiences in a book, Waugh in Abyssinia(1936), which Rose Macaulay dismissed as a "fascist tract" on account of its pro-Italian tone.A better-known account is his novel Scoop (1938), in which the protagonist, William Boot, is loosely based on Deedes.Macaulay began writing her first novel, Abbots Verney (published 1906), after leaving Somerville and while living with her parents at Ty Isaf, near Aberystwyth, in Wales. Later novels include The Lee Shore (1912), Potterism (1920), Dangerous Ages (1921), Told by an Idiot (1923), And No Man's Wit (1940), The World My Wilderness (1950), and The Towers of Trebizond (1956). Her non-fiction work includes They Went to Portugal, Catchwords and Claptrap, a biography of Milton, and Pleasure of Ruins.

During World War I Macaulay worked in the British Propaganda Department, after some time as a nurse and later as a civil servant in the War Office. She pursued a romantic affair with Gerald O'Donovan, a writer and former Jesuit priest, from 1918 until his death in 1942. During the interwar period she was a sponsor of the Peace Pledge Union. Her London flat was utterly destroyed in the Blitz, and she had to rebuild her life and library from scratch, as documented in the semi-autobiographical short story, Miss Anstruther's Letters, which was published in 1942.

The Towers of Trebizond, Macaulay's final novel, is generally regarded as her masterpiece. Strongly autobiographical, it treats with wistful humour and deep sadness the attractions of mystical Christianity, and the irremediable conflict between adulterous love and the demands of the Christian faith. For this work, she received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1956.

Waugh's social circle in the 1930s expanded and he relied on aristocratic friends for places to stay when he returned from his travels. Amongst his acquaintances were Diana Guinnessand Bryan Guinness (dedicatees of Vile Bodies), Lady Diana Cooper and her husband Duff Cooper,Nancy Mitford DiDi

Diana Mitford, Lady Mosley (née Freeman-Mitford; 17 June 1910 – 11 August 2003), was one of Britain's noted Mitford sisters. She was married first to Bryan Walter Guinness, heir to the barony of Moyne, and secondly to Sir Oswald Mosley, 6th Baronet, of Ancoats, leader of the British Union of Fascists; her second marriage, in 1936, took place at the home of Joseph Goebbels, with Adolf Hitler as guest of honour. Subsequently her involvement with right-wing political causes resulted in three years' internment during the Second World War. She later moved to Paris and enjoyed some success as a writer.She caused controversy when she appeared on Desert Island Discs in 1989.Family friend, James Lees-Milne wrote of her beauty; "She was the nearest thing to Botticelli's Venus that I have ever seen.Diana Mitford was the daughter of David Bertram Ogilvy Freeman-Mitford, 2nd Baron Redesdale (1878–1958, son of Algernon Freeman-Mitford, 1st Baron Redesdale), and his wife, Sydney (1880–1963), daughter of Thomas Gibson Bowles, MP. Mitford was born in Belgraviaand raised in the country estate of Batsford Park, then from the age of 10 at the family home, Asthall Manor, in Oxfordshire and later at Swinbrook House, a home her father had built in the village of Swinbrook. 

At the age of 18, she became secretly engaged to Bryan Walter Guinness shortly after her presentation at Court. Guinness, an Irish aristocrat, writer and brewing heir, would inherit the barony of Moyne. Her parents were initially opposed to the engagement but in time were persuaded. Sydney was particularly uneasy at the thought of two such young people having possession of such a large fortune, but she was eventually convinced Bryan was a suitable husband. They married on 30 January 1929, her sisters Jessica and Deborah were too ill to attend the ceremony. The couple had an income of £20,000 a year, an estate in Biddesden, Hampshire, and houses in London and Dublin. They were well known for hosting aristocratic society events involving the Bright Young People. The writer Evelyn Waugh exclaimed that her beauty "ran through the room like a peal of bells", and he dedicated the novel Vile Bodies, a satire of the Roaring Twenties, to the couple^]Her portrait was painted by Augustus John, Pavel Tchelitchew and Henry Lamb.The couple had two sons, Jonathan (b. 1930), andDesmond (b. 1931).n February 1932 Diana met Sir Oswald Mosley at a garden party at the home of noted society hostess Emerald Cunard. He went on to become leader of the British Union of Fascists, and Diana became his mistress; he was at the time married to Lady Cynthia Curzon, a daughter of Lord Curzon, former Viceroy of India and his first wife, American mercantile heiress Mary Victoria Leiter. Diana left her husband but Sir Oswald would not leave his wife. Quite suddenly, Cynthia died in 1933 of peritonitis. While Mosley was devastated by the death of his wife, he soon started an affair with her younger sister Lady Alexandra Metcalfe.

Owing to Diana's parents' disapproval over her decision to leave Guinness for Mosley, she was briefly estranged from most of her family. Her affair and eventual marriage to Mosley also strained relationships with her sisters. Initially, Decca and Debo were banned to see Diana as she was "living in sin" with Mosley in London. Debo eventually got to know Mosley and ended up liking him very much. Decca despised Mosley's beliefs and became permanently estranged from Diana after the late 1930s. Pam and her husband Derek Jackson got along well with Mosley. Nancy never liked Mosley and, like Decca, despised his political beliefs, but was able to learn to tolerate him for the sake of her relationship with Diana. Nancy wrote the novel Wigs on the Green, which satirised Mosley and his beliefs. After it was published in 1935 relations between the sisters became strained to non-existent and it was not until the mid 1940s that they were able to get back to being close again

The couple rented Wooton Lodge, a country house in Staffordshire which Diana had intended to buy. She furnished much of her new home with much of the Swinbrook furniture that her father was selling.The Mosleys lived at Wooton Lodge along with their children from 1936 to 1939.In 1934, Mitford went to Germany with her then 19-year-old sister Unity. While there they attended the first Nuremberg rally after the Nazi seizure of power. A friend of Hitler's, Unity introduced Diana to him in March 1935. They returned again for the second rally later that year and were entertained as his guests at the 1935 rally. In 1936, he provided a Mercedes-Benz to chauffeur Diana to the Berlin Olympic games. She became well-acquainted with Winifred Wagner and Magda Goebbels.

Diana and Oswald wed in secret on 6 October 1936 in the drawing room of Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels, whose wife Magda was a friend of Diana. Adolf Hitler was reportedly the sole guest. The marriage was kept secret until the birth of their first child in 1938. In August 1939, Hitler told Diana over lunch that war was inevitable. Mosley and Diana had two sons: (Oswald) Alexander Mosley (born 26 November 1938) and Max Rufus Mosley (born 13 April 1940), president of the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) for 16 years. Hitler presented the couple with a silver framed picture of himself. The Mosleys were interned during much of World War II, under Defence Regulation 18B along with other British fascists including Norah Elam.

MI5 documents released in 2002 described Lady Mosley and her political leanings. "Diana Mosley, wife of Sir Oswald Mosley, is reported on the 'best authority', that of her family and intimate circle, to be a public danger at the present time. Is said to be far cleverer and more dangerous than her husband and will stick at nothing to achieve her ambitions. She is wildly ambitious." On 29 June 1940, eleven weeks after the birth of her fourth son Max, Diana was arrested (hastily stuffing Hitler's photograph under Max's cot mattress when the police came to arrest her) and taken to a cell in F Block in London's Holloway Prison for women. She and her husband were held without charge or trial, at His Majesty's pleasure largely due to the Home Secretary, Herbert Morrison. The pair were initially held separately but, after personal intervention by Churchill, in December 1941 Mosley and two other 18B husbands (one of them Mosley's friend Captain H.W. Luttman-Johnson) were permitted to join their wives at Holloway. After more than three years' imprisonment, they were both released in November 1943 on the grounds of Mosley's ill health; they were placed under house arrest until the end of the war and were denied passports until 1947.^[

Lady Mosley's prison time failed to disturb her approach to life; she remarked in her later years that she never grew fraises des bois that tasted as good as those she had cultivated in the prison garden. Though prison was not something she would have chosen, she said, "It was still lovely to wake up in the morning and feel that one was lovely," when she compared her lot to the other women incarcerated at Holloway (Oswald Mosley later mentioned this to Diana's sister Nancy, who in turn included the line in her novel, Love in a Cold Climate).According to her obituary in the Daily Telegraph a diamond swastika was among her jewels
After the war ended the couple kept homes in Ireland, with apartments in London and Paris. Their recently renovated Clonfert home, a former Bishop's palace, burned down in an accidental fire. Following this, they moved to a home near Fermoy, County Cork, later settling permanently in France, at Orsay. They were neighbours of Duke and Duchess of Windsor, and soon became close friends with them. The Duchess of Windsor, upon seeing the Temple de la Gloire for the first time, was said to have remarked, "Oh, it's charming, charming but where do you live?"

Once again they were well known for entertaining, but were barred from all functions at the British Embassy. During their time in France the Mosleys quietly went through another marriage ceremony; Hitler had safeguarded their original marriage license, and it was never found after the war. During this period, Mosley was unfaithful to Diana but she found for the most part that she was able to learn to keep herself from getting too upset regarding his adulterous habits. The only time she and sister Jessica communicated with each other following their estrangement was when they were both taking care of their sister Nancy. Nancy was at Versailles, and was battling Hodgkin's disease. Soon after Nancy's death in 1973, all communication between the sisters ceased. Diana was also a lifelong supporter of the British Union of Fascists (BUF), and its postwar successor the Union Movement, to which she made financial contributions until the 1994 death of its organiser Jeffrey Hamm^]

At times she was ambiguous when discussing her loyalties to Britain and her strong belief in fascism. In her 1977 autobiography A Life of Contrasts she wrote "I didn't love Hitler any more than I did Winston [Churchill]. I can't regret it, it was so interesting." At other times, however, her anti-semitism became more explicit: the journalist Paul Callan remembered mentioning that he was Jewish while interviewing her husband in Diana's presence. According to Callan: "I mentioned, just in the course of conversation, that I was Jewish – at which Lady Mosley went ashen, snapped a crimson nail and left the room ... No explanation was given but she would later write to a friend: A nice, polite reporter came to interview Tom [as Mosley was known] but he turned out to be Jewish and was sitting there at our table. They are a very clever race and come in all shapes and sizes.'"

In 1989, she was invited to appear on the BBC Radio 4 programme Desert Island Discs with Sue Lawley. She caused controversy for describing Hitler as "fascinating", and when asked: "What about the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis?", she replied: "Oh no, I don't think it was that many." Her choices were: Symphony No. 41 (Mozart), Casta Diva from Norma(Bellini), Ode to Joy (Beethoven), Die Walküre (Wagner), Liebestod (Wagner), L'amour est un oiseau rebelle from Carmen (Bizet), A Whiter Shade Of Pale (Procol Harum) and Polonaise, Op. 44 (Chopin).

In 1998, due to her advancing age, she moved out of the Temple de la Gloire and into a Paris apartment. Temple de la Gloire was subsequently sold for £1 million in 2000. Throughout much of her life, particularly after her years in prison, she was afflicted by regular bouts of migraines. In 1981, she underwent a successful surgery to remove a brain tumour. She convalesced at Chatsworth House, the residence of her sister Deborah. In the early 1990s, she was also successfully treated for skin cancer. In later life she also suffered from deafness.Mosley was shunned in the British media for a period after the war and the couple established their own publishing company, Euphorion Books, named after a character in Faust. This allowed Mosley to publish and Diana was free to commission a cultural list.After his release from jail, Mosley had declared the death of fascism. Diana initially translated Goethe's Faust. Other notable books that she translated for Euphorion included La Princesse de Clèves (1950), Niki Lauda's memoirs (1985), and    She also edited several of her husband's books.

While in France, Diana edited the right-wing cultural magazine The European for six years, to which she also contributed. She provided articles, book reviews and regular diary entries. Many of her contributions were republished in 2008 in The Pursuit of Laughter.  She specialised in reviewing autobiographical and biographical accounts as well as the occasional novel. Characteristically she would provide commentary of her own experiences with and knowledge of the subject of the book she was reviewing. She was the lead literary reviewer for the London Evening Standard during A.N. Wilson's tenure as literary editor. In 1996, and on personal grounds, the new editor Max Hastings insisted that she no longer be contracted by the newspaper. Following Hastings' retirement in 2001, the newspaper published several more book reviews by her until her death in 2003.(above  Stella Tennant)

In She died in Paris in August 2003, aged 93, reportedly due to complications related to a stroke she had suffered a week earlier, but reports later surfaced that she had been one of the many elderly fatalities of the heat wave of 2003 in mostly non-air-conditioned Paris.Her remains are interred in the Swinbrook Churchyard in Oxfordshire with those of her sisters. Her death leaves one surviving sister: Deborah Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire.(below Stella Tennant)

Her stepson Nicholas Mosley is a novelist who also wrote a critical memoir of his father for which Diana reportedly never forgave him, despite their previously close relationship. One of her great-granddaughters,, a great-niece, Stella Tennant, and a grandson, Tom Guinness, are models. 

"I'm sure he was to blame for the extermination of the Jews", she told British journalist Andrew Roberts, "[h]e was to blame for everything, and I say that as someone who approved of him."Roberts criticised Lady Mosley following her death on the pages of The Daily Telegraph (16 August 2003), declaring that she was an "unrepentant Nazi and effortlessly charming". He, in turn, was assailed three days later, in the same newspaper, by her son and granddaughter.  She was portrayed by actress Emma Davies in the 1997 Channel Four TV miniseries, Mosley. actress Emma Davies

At the outbreak of the war in September 1939, ,  sought military employment Waugh was commissioned into the Royal Marines and began training at Chatham naval base

Waugh was soon involved in a daily training routine that left him with "so stiff a spine that he found it painful even to pick up a pen"
 In April he was promoted temporarily to captain and given command of a company, but even after the German invasion of the Low Countries his battalion was not called into action. Waugh's inability to adapt to regimental life meant that he soon lost his command and became the battalion's Intelligence Officer. In this role he finally saw action, as part of the force sent in August 1940 to Dakar in Western Africa to support an attempt by Free French troops to install General de Gaulle as leader there. Hampered by fog, and misinformed about the extent of the town's defences, the mission was a failure, and on 26 September the British forces withdrew. Waugh commented that "Bloodshed has been avoided at the cost of honour."

In November 1940 Waugh was posted to a commando unit and after further training became a member of "Layforce" under Brigadier Robert Laycock. In February 1941 the unit sailed to the Mediterranean, where it participated in an unsuccessful attempt to recapture Bardia, on the Libyan coast. In May the force was required to assist in the evacuation of Crete; Waugh was shocked by the disorder, loss of discipline and, as he saw it, cowardice of the departing troops.On the roundabout journey home in July by troopship Waugh wrote Put Out More Flags, a novel of the early months of the war written in his familiar 1930s style.Back in England, more training and waiting followed, until in May 1942 Waugh was transferred, on Laycock's recommendation, to the Royal Horse Guards.On 10 June 1942 Laura gave birth to a fourth child, Margaret.gWaugh's elation at his transfer soon descended into disillusion as he failed to find opportunities for active service. The death of his father on 26 June 1943, and the need to deal with family affairs, prevented Waugh from departing with his brigade for North Africa, as part of Operation Husky. Despite his undoubted courage, his unmilitary and insubordinate character was making him effectively unemployable.After spells of idleness at the regimental depot in Windsor, Waugh began parachute training at Tatton Park, landed awkwardly and fractured a fibula. Recovering at Windsor, he applied for three months' unpaid leave to write the novel that was forming in his mind. His request was granted, and on 31 January 1944 he departed for Chagford in Devon,

 where he could work in seclusion. The result of his labours was Brideshead.,after the war increasingly dependent on alcohol and on drugs to relieve his insomnia and depression. Two more children, James (born 1946) and Septimus (born 1950), completed his family.^{[below mitford}

By 1953 Waugh's popularity as a writer was declining.. Partly because of his dependency on drugs, his health was steadily deteriorating.Shortage of cash led him to agree in November 1953 to be interviewed on BBC radio, where the panel took an aggressive line. "[T]hey tried to make a fool of me, and I don't think they entirely succeeded", Waugh wrote to Nancy Mitford.Peter Fleming in The Spectator likened the interview to "the goading of a bull by matadors".

Early in 1954 Waugh  believing that he was being possessed by devils. A brief medical examination indicated that Waugh was suffering from bromide poisoning from his drugs regime. in

As he approached his sixties, Waugh was in poor health, prematurely aged, "fat, deaf, short of breath" according to Patey. Biographer Martin Stannard likened his appearance around this time to that of "an exhausted rogue jollied up by drink" In 1962 Waugh began work on his autobiography, and that same year wrote his final fiction, the long short story Basil Seal Rides Again. This revival of the main protagonist of Put Out More Flags was published in 1963; the Times Literary Supplement called it a "nasty little book". 

On Easter Day, 10 April 1966, after attending a Latin Mass in a neighbouring village with members of his family, Waugh died suddenly of heart failure at his Combe Florey home. He was buried, by special arrangement, in a consecrated plot outside the Anglican churchyard in Combe Florey. In the course of his lifetime Waugh made enemies, and offended many people; writer James Lees-Milne asserted that he was "the nastiest-tempered man in England". He had been a bully at school, and retained an intimidating presence throughout his life; his son Auberon remarked that the force of his father's personality was such that, despite his lack of height, "generals and chancellors of the exchequer, six foot six and exuding self-importance from every pore, quail[ed] in front of him."

 In his 1953 radio interview he named Augustus Egg (1816–63) as a painter for whom he had particular esteem. He came to admire George Orwell because of their shared patriotism and sense of morality.

Orwell, an admirer of Waugh's writing, concluded that Waugh was "almost as good a novelist as it is possible to be ... while holding untenable opinions".Below Egg.

Waugh is widely regarded as a master of style. In the view of critic Clive James, "Nobody ever wrote a more unaffectedly elegant English ... its hundreds of years of steady development culminate in him". As his talent developed and matured he maintained what literary critic Andrew Michael Roberts calls "an exquisite sense of the ludicrous, and a fine aptitude for exposing false attitudes". In the first stages of his 40-year writing career, before his conversion to Catholicism in 1930, Waugh was the novelist of the Bright Young People generation. 

We are left with an  image of the writer as intolerant, snobbish and sadistic, with pronounced fascist leanings.

 Graham Greene, in a letter to The Times shortly after Waugh's death, acknowledged him as "the greatest novelist of my generation",Nancy Mitford said of him in a television interview; "What nobody remembers about Evelyn is that everything with him was jokes "But as Dylan Thomas pointed out, "All jokes are bourgeois".His canonbury home
Rex did illustrations for Walter de la Mare, and perhaps most notably, for Gulliver's Travels) and mural and trompe l'oeil painting. He was commissioned to produced posters and illustrations for Shell Petroleum and the Radio Times. He also made designs for Wedgwood china based on drawings he made of the Devon village of Clovelly. Whistler's elegance and wit ensured his success as a portrait artist among the fashionable and he painted many members of London society, including Edith Sitwell, and cecil beaton

Cecil Beaton will always be remembered for his huge influence on the world of photography and fashion. His incredible works personified elegance and grace– but his personal behavior was at times, anything but. He was not known to be a loyal friend, a humble talent or a genuine soul of any sort. In fact, his persona and image was a self-creation– fabricated with great calculation to gain him access to the world that was just beyond his reach.

When obsessive vanity, insecurity and posturing are the guiding forces that propel you forward, it can be anything but attractive.. He was a gossip, all the awful things he said about everybody, especially the people at Vogue.” In fact, this most preciously balanced man laughed at everybody except himself – for whom he reserved his deep wells of compassion and self-pity. As the man described by his on-off friend Truman Capote as a “total self-creation”, he knew that the business of being Cecil was no laughing matter, but something that needed serious application for the success he had always craved.And the proof of that success is the influence he has had over so many younger photographers since his death 29 years ago. Mario Testino, who has captured modern society and fashion as variously as Beaton did, speaks for many when he says: “He marked his period as if he were the only photographer around.” Another of today’s most celebrated fashion photographers, Nick Knight, praises his work “for its grace and elegance. From the touching and funny pictures of his sisters and the delicately fragile poses of his photographs of society beauties, as if they were made of porcelain, to the memorable wartime images, he was always sensitive and poetic.”So, what was the essence of Beatonism? He was a born outsider; posh but not quite posh enough – his family’s wealth was based on trade. Well educated – but at Harrow, not Eton. Cambridge, not Oxford. Clever but not intellectual. Good-looking but not quite handsome. He just failed to make the grade in those things that he considered mattered. Vain – he had his clothes made one size too small to flatter his already slim figure – but never glamorous, despite an international lifestyle that brought him into contact with everyone who “mattered” for more than 50 years.

But he had a burning desire to leap the fence and browse the green fields of aristocratic privilege, still going strong in the Twenties and Thirties. Beaton was what was known at the time as a pansy. With eyes trained on the British upper classes and American plutocrats, his tendencies could have been a disadvantage, but he capitalised on them by aiming not at the men, but at their wives.And the tool this most vulnerable of men, described by Cocteau as “Malice in Wonderland”, used for unlocking the doors of privilege was portrait photography. He quickly learnt that portraiture was all about flattery. He made horse-faced duchesses from the shires and granite-jawed daughters of railroad tycoons look younger, more beautiful and refined. As Dahl-Wolfe said:“Cecil was very bold. He thought nothing of slicing inches off a sitter’s waist if he thought it would please and lead to other commissions. He told me he had realised at the very beginning that this was the way to make the grade. But I think he was unfair to himself. He was a very good photographer but he was always too keen to flatter and please.” Then, having flattered their bodies, he flattered their egos by placing them in settings reflecting the latest artistic movements.His studio was kept busy working on the photographic plates – lifting droopy eyelids, tightening sagging jaws and whittling down figures until they looked like those of girls. And none of his sitters ever complained, any more than the men who paid the bills. And why should they? Beaton was a very clever photographer whose early portraits reflected continental art movements in his use of mirrors, torn paper, fragments of classical sculpture and even Cellophane to create a surreal fantasy that would automatically make his sitters look much more interesting than they usually were. They were as flattered culturally as they were physically, even if they had no idea that the original ideas were taken from the work of Cocteau, Bakst or Dalí.The next step in the carefully crafted ascent of Cecil was to enter the fashion world, an easy task for a man who knew everybody in London society ”By the mid 1930s, Beaton had arrived. His work was in great demand and although not especially technically adept, had begun to build up a portfolio that stands today as a sophisticated and elegant record of the interwar years. Although no Brassai or Cartier-Bresson. He appeared to be a friend of both, although that did not stop him saying of the Duchess after the Duke’s death: “What will happen to her is of no interest. She should live at the Ritz, deaf and a bit gaga.” No sentiment with Cecil once people had outgrown their usefulness.

 Beaton’s photographs of her looking regal, romantic and pretty were a triumph.He was made.  The Queen fared little better: “She would make an extremely good hospital nurse or nanny.These are cruel comments by any standards, especially since the Royal Family had been so helpful to his ascent. The young pansy had, only too clearly, become the vitriolic old queen, who found it difficult to acknowledge loyalty or allegiance to anyone. 

Whistler and the other members of the set that included Beaton and Waugh at least nominally which he belonged to and which became known as the "Bright Young Things".His activities also extended to ballet design. He designed the scenery and costumes for Ninette de Valois and Gavin Gordon's Hogarth-inspired 1935 ballet The Rake's Progress.

When war broke out, though he was 35, he was eager to join the army. He was commissioned into the Welsh Guards as Lieutenant 131651. His artistic talent, far from being a stumbling block to his military career, was greatly appreciated and he was able to find time to continue some of his work, including a notable self portrait in uniform now in the National Army Museum.Paintings at Port Lympne (now known asPort Lympne Wild Animal Park), Plas Newydd and Dorneywood amongst others, show his outstanding talent in this genre. During his time at Plas Newydd he may well have become the lover of the daughter of the 6th Marquess of Anglesey, the owner of the house who had commissioned him to undertake the decorative scheme. Whistler and Lady Caroline Paget are known to have become very close friends and he painted numerous portraits of her, including a startling nude. Whether this painting was actually posed for or whether it was how Rex imagined her naked is a matter of debate.

A series of love letters written to  his supposed lover Lady Caroline Paget, eldest daughter of the 6th Marquess of Anglesey, have recently been added to the collection of items relating to the life and work of artist Rex Whistler at Plas Newydd.

The National Trust property in Llanfairpwll, Anglesey, is the home of the Marquess of Anglesey and holds the largest collection of Whistler’s paintings and drawings, including proof editions of his famous illustrations for 'Gulliver’s Travels' and an 18 metre wide masterpiece covering an entire wall in the dining room.

The latest addition to this permanent exhibition sheds more light on the poignantly romantic tale of the artist’s unrequited love for Lady Caroline.

“Whistler’s fascinating correspondence with Lady Caroline carves out a remarkable love story and reflects the depth of his passion for her and his connections with the Plas," explained David Ellender, House Manager at Plas Newydd.

"Sadly, it would appear from the letters that any ‘romance’ between them was driven harder by Rex than Lady Caroline. Rex Whistler first met Lady Caroline at Daye House, the Wiltshire home of his mentor Edith Olivier when she and her sister Elizabeth dropped in one afternoon. They were therefore already acquainted when Rex came to Plas Newydd for the first time to discuss the plans of the 6th Marquess to paint the dining room mural.

Painted between 1936 and 1937, the mural shows Whistler’s characteristic humour but is also full of love – for the family as a whole, but most of all for Lady Caroline.

Rex Whistler created his Toile de Jouy pattern featuring beautiful scenes of the picturesque & unique fishing village of Clovelly in 1932. Eventually the fabric went out of production & the copper roller was melted down for the war effort.This love for Caroline – who tragically married someone else – is revealed in the coded references he includes in his Arcadian and Romantic view of a coastal landscape. The romantic allusions also include a depiction of Romeo and Juliet in which the young Whistler (Romeo) languishes beneath the balcony of Lady Caroline (Juliet).

Whilst he was working on the mural at Plas Newydd Caroline decided she was going to spend more time in London and Rex designed a ‘rococo style’ petition on Plas Newydd headed paper and signed by himself and Henry (later the 7th Marquess).It says, “Beautiful darling Caroline, This is a petition to beg her to reconsider her decision to leave Plas Newydd on the evening of August 22nd 1937 and to defer her departure until given permission by Rex and Henry.”

Rex wrote to Caroline often and many of these letters can now be found in the exhibition room at Plas Newydd, which is the only permanent display of his works, anywhere.Again, this is subtly reflected in much of his work.”His most noted work during the early part of his career was for the Cafe at the Tate Gallery completed in 1927 when he was only 22. 

His activities also extended to ballet design. He designed the scenery and costumes for Ninette de Valois and Gavin Gordon's Hogarth-inspired 1935 ballet The Rake's Progress.

When war broke out, though he was 35, he was eager to join the army. He was commissioned into the Welsh Guards as Lieutenant 131651. His artistic talent, far from being a stumbling block to his military career, was greatly appreciated and he was able to find time to continue some of his work, including a notable self portrait in uniform now in the National Army Museum. In 1944 he was sent to France following the D-Day Landings.

During the war, he was the burial officer of his regiment, and his soldiers became somewhat suspicious of the 20 crosses he carried on his tank. He decided that just because he was at war, doesn't mean he couldn't paint, and therefore also carried a bucket hanging off the side of his tank to carry his paintbrushes.
In July he was with the Guards Armoured Division in Normandy as the invasion force was poised to break out of the salient east of Caen. On the hot and stuffy 18 July his tank, after crossing a railway line, drove over some felled telegraph wires beside the railway, which became entangled in its tracks. He and the crew got out to free the tank from the wire when a German machine gunner opened fire on them, preventing them from getting back into their tank. Whistler dashed across an open space of 60 yards to another tank to instruct its commander, a Sergeant Lewis Sherlock, to return the fire. As he climbed down from Sherlock's tank a mortar bomb exploded beside him and killed him instantly, throwing him into the air. He was the first fatality suffered by the Battalion in the Normandy Campaign. The two free tanks of his troop carried out their dead commander's orders before returning to lay out his corpse beside a nearby hedge, after first having removed his personal belongings. Whistler's neck had been broken, but there was not a mark on his body. The troop was then immediately called away to act as infantry support, so when that evening Sherlock obtained permission to locate and bury Rex Whistler, he found that this had already been done by an officer of the Green Jackets, a regiment in which Whistler's younger brother, Laurence (an acclaimed glass engraver and poet) was serving. Among the many works of art produced by Rex Whistler during his time in the forces was a fine pencil portrait of Sergeant Sherlock.

It seems as if Whistler, like many other artists in war, predicted his own death. Just days before he was killed, he remarked to a friend that he wanted to be buried where he fell, not in a military cemetery. On the night before his death, a fellow officer, Francis Portal came up to him and they talked for a bit. Before they parted, Portal remarked "So we'll probably see each other tomorrow evening." Wistfully, Whistler replied "I hope so.

A memorial glass engraving by Laurence Whistler (the Rex prism) is to be found in the Morning Chapel at Salisbury Cathedral. To see a video of the Rex prism click