TOM MITFORD : 1909-1945 : TIMELINE

 EVENTS COVERED IN A FULL  LENGTH BIOGRAPHY OF TOM MITFORD 

BY WILLIAM CROSS, FSA SCOT

TOM MITFORD: A FEARFUL OLD TWISTER

1904  :  Tom’s parents  Hon. David Bertram Ogilvy  Freeman-Mitford  and Sydney Bowles marry.

1904 :  Tom’s sister Nancy born  28^th  November.

1907 : Tom’s sister Pamela born 25^th  November.

1909 : Tom born 3^rd  January at 1 Graham Street, London.

1909 : Tom baptised on 10^th February as Thomas David Freeman-Mitford.

1910 : Tom’s sister Diana born 17^th  June.

1911 :  Tom at Undercliff Road, Boscombe, Bournemouth on the  Census Return.

1914  : War declared on 28^th  July.

1914 : Tom’s sister Unity born 8^th August.

1914 :  Tom’s father David goes to war with the Northumberland Fusiliers.

1915 : Death of Tom’s uncle Hon. Clement  Freeman-Mitford heir to the Barony of Redesdale, eldest brother of David on 13^th May.

1915 : Tom’s father David becomes heir to  the Barony of Redesdale on 13^th May. Tom becomes an ‘Honourable’.

1916: Death of Tom’s paternal grandfather ‘Bartie’ Freeman-Mitford:  Lord Redesdale  17^th  August.

1916 : Tom’s father David becomes Lord Redesdale, Tom is next heir in waiting.

1917 : Tom’s sister Jessica born  11^th  September.

1918-9 :  Batsford Park : The Mitford Family Homestead sold off.

1919: Asthall Manor : Acquired as  the new Mitford Family  Homestead.

1919: Tom goes off to Lockers Park Preparatory School, Hemel Hempstead.

1920: Tom’s sister Deborah born 31^st  March.

1922 : Tom’s maternal grandfather ‘Tap’ Bowles dies 12^th  January.

1922 : Tom goes to Eton College as an Oppidan Scholar  at Lent Term under House Tutor FW Dobbs in Jourdelay House.

1922-1928 : Tom’s Eton College  contemporaries include James Lees-Milne, (the diarist) Randolph Churchill ( son of Winston), Nigel Birch  (politician)  and Edward James ( Poet).

1924-7 : Tom joins  Cadets C.Q.M.S. Eton College. Contgt and  later 16^th London Regiment.

1926 : David  , Tom’s father,  pet family name of  ‘Farve’ takes a long lease on 26 Rutland Gate, South Kensington, London SW7 with adjoining stables and a Mews flat. The Cotswolds home become Swinbrook House.

c 1928 : Tom loses his virginity with Baroness ‘ Baba’ De’ Erlanger, having previously  engaged in homosexual affairs at Eton  with Hamish Erskine, Robert Byron, and others.

1928 : Tom leaves Eton College having made a name for himself in sport, drama and in musical events.  Rejects going to University in England.

1922-1930s : Tom’s six sisters reach their ‘coming out’ years as debutantes and are presented at Court by their mother, Sydney, pet family name of ‘Muv’.

1928 : Tom begins his travels through Europe, including to  Italy, Germany,  Austria and Hungary,  for pleasure and to study  music and law.

1928-1939 :  Tom stays as a paying guest at Castle Bernstein  meets Count Janos Almassi  and his neighbours including two sisters,  the Countesses Erdody. Tom  remains in close touch with regular visits for a decade and more  and has  intimate affairs with them ( almost certainly sexual/ deviant).

1928 : Tom has romantic flings in Vienna  with Penelope Cunard and others.

1929 : Tom returns to England to the family  homes in London and Swinbrook.

1929 : Tom enrols as a trainee  barrister at the Inner Temple.

1920s-30s : Tom shares a flat with Randolph Churchill and later has his own flat at 4 Rutland Mews, London SW7.

1929 : Bruno Hat Hoax – Tom is later importuned by Lytton Strachey.

1929 : Tom meets Tilly Losch ( Austrian ballet dancer and later Hollywood  actress) in Paris and begins a 10-year-long, torrid affair.

C1929-1944 : Tom has a series of carnal affairs with numerous women including  Baroness Baba D’erlanger, Doris Castlerosse,  Lady Diana Cooper, Janetta Woolley, Penelope Dudley Ward,  Sheilah Graham, Barbara,  Countess of Moray,  Lady Carolyn Paget,  La Jana, and  Tilly Losch.

1930s : Tom is flying with the Auxiliary Air Force and has an accident.

1930-1: Tom is a part of the Mitford family ski-ing and skating trips to Switzerland.

1932 :Tom is called to the Bar and begins to seek briefs  and has own London flat at 4 Rutland Mews with a housekeeper.

1933 -1940s : Tom is active in the Territorials – “ Queens Westminsters”.

1930s  : Tom is involved in running “ The Worst Play Club” and regular first nighter.

1933 : Tom provides support to sister Diana  in  her divorce from Bryan Guinness.

1933-34 : Tom’s affair with Tilly Losch reaches a crisis point with Tilly’s divorce from Edward James.

1934 : Tom is junior consul in the Haddon “ Letters to the King” blackmail scandal.

1935 : Tom Is junior consul in the Rattenbury Murder defending  George Stoner.

1935- 1939 : Tom is on call  as aid/driver / companion for his sisters Diana and Unity during conquest of Germany and pursuit of Adolf Hitler. Tom meet Hitler and attends several Nazi Rallys at Nuremberg. Back in England  Tom also joins Oswald Mosley’s BUF. 

1936-38 : Tom’s mistress Tilly Losch leaves Britain for USA (  she returns 1938) and has a holiday with tom in Austria. Tilly later goes to a TB clinic in Switzerland.

1937 : Tom is involved in the “ Ward of Court” application over  elopement of his sister Decca with Esmond Romilly.  Tom defends sister Deborah in a legal action for libel against the “Daily Express”.

1938 : Tom is a dilemma over the Munich crisis and invasion of Austria.

1938 : Tom is made up to Deputy Judge Advocate  General dealing  with Court Martials.

1939 : Tom is called up for  full time military service as war clouds form over Europe.

1937-9 : Tom supports  Farve’s pro –German speeches  in The House of Lords.

1939 : Tom attends a BUF meeting at Earls Court  addressed by Oswald Mosley and salutes – his former mistress  Tilly ( a Jewess)  attends with Randolph Churchill and leaves in horror.  She ends the relationship with Tom. Tom in trouble for taking the salute to Mosley.

1940-1944 : Tom is  army training and  is posted with the  Queens Westminsters to Italy, North Africa and Palestine. 

1940s : Tom ( with Muv) makes representations to Winston Churchill to have Diana and Oswald Mosley  ( interned  as a danger to the state)  brought together in one prison – and this is achieved.

1944:  Tom spends 6 months back in London at Army Staff College – Several references of note covering the period in James Lees-Milne’s Diaries.

1945 : Tom reassigned to a  Unit away from the European land mass  goes as Adjutant to  1 Battn.  The Devonshire Regiment – in  the jungles of Burma.

1945 : March Tom is wounded and transferred to hospital where he dies on  30^th  March 1945.

1946?  : Farve has  the memorial  to   “ A Very Perfect Son and Brother “  for Tom placed in St Mary’s Church, Swinbrook.

1948 : Death of Unity Mitford in Scotland, 28^th May.

1958 : Farve Dies at Otterburn, Northumberland –  his last years are  spent with his mistress, estranged from Muv.

1963 : Muv Dies at Inch Kenneth – the Scottish Island owned by Tom.

1973 : Death of Nancy Mitford in Paris, 30^th June.

1994: Death of Pamela Mitford in London, 12^th April.

1996 : Death of Jessica Mitford in California, 23^rd July.

2003 : Death of Diana Mitford in Paris,  11^th  August.

2014 : Death of Deborah Mitford at Chatsworth, 24^th September.

The book " TOM MITFORD: A FEARFUL OLD TWISTER" will be published on 30 March 2025, the 80th Anniversary of the death of Tom Mitford from a sniper's bullet in Burma on 30 March 1945.

THE BOOK IS AVAILABLE ON EBAY OR DIRECT FROM WILLIAM CROSS 

ENQUIRIES E-MAIL WILL 

 

williecross@aol.com

All Tommyrot Says Author of Book on Carnarvon and Carter

                    
              Luxor  in  the  days  following  the  discovery  of                                                 Tutankhamun's  Tomb

         Lady  Evelyn Herbert  in the  arms of  Howard Carter

The signs were there  early on in the historically inaccurate previews  that  there would be a  tardy and  tarnished  account  in the  2016  ITV series “ New Tutankhamun”,  all about  Lord   Carnarvon, Howard Carter and the discovery of the Tomb of  Tutankhamun in 1922. 

There was in the end a messy, muddled  four part story with the wrong   kind  of   costumes  and  digitised  sand dunes and  a  narrative  made up of a  jingle  jangle largely fixed  on  two women; one,  a  Miss Lewis,  a  member of the Metropolitan Museum Staff  and the other,  Lord Carnarvon’s daughter, Evelyn Herbert, each chasing the love interest of  Howard Carter.   

                                                        

All  TV bog-standard drama   treatments  need a ‘love’ interest to  keep the  old  romantic formula going  that  fictional  drama thrives  on for mugging  an attentive following. History, real life, real lives are  not always accommodating.  So the writer turns to making it all up or embellishing the  truth .

William Cross, Author of six books on the Carnarvons  comments:

“Such a scenario involving Lady Evelyn  is not an  ingenious plot  it is not a new angle on  the real story,  it  is an assertion that  has been made before – by  the Tutankhamun  authors  Thomas Hoving ( a man who blew the gaff on the whole story, declaring  Carnarvon and Carter tomb thieves, who looted  the tomb before it's declaration to the world)   and  H V ( Victor)  Winstone, one of Carter's two principal  biographers.  

It  is a fanciful suggestion at best  and  only entangles and dilutes the actual real history. 

THERE IS NO EVIDENCE  OF A  LOVE  AFFAIR  BETWEEN LADY EVELYN AND HOWARD CARTER.

Besides Carter was   homosexually  inclined - as I recorded in 2012 in my  book " Lordy! Tutankhamun's Patron As A Young Man"   ( and  mentioned  in an well timed outing  highlighted by The Daily Telegraph  Letters Page on 16 October, 2016)  moreover, medically  he  was not fit for purpose. A childhood hernia ( that  required  remedial care)  and abdominal surgery at the hands of the great  surgeon  Sir  Berkeley Monyihan, in 1921-2 left him scarred and damaged internally.   Ironically, as a boy Carter had to be bandaged like a mummy to keep his hernia in place.  ”

The  fictional characters ( bearing the names of real people from history)   in  the  ITV  series acted out the fictional scenario.  Cross remarks:

" The trouble was some people thought they were seeing the playing out of history. That is a horrific effect especially so close to the centenary of the discovery.

The series took  liberties with history and  mocked the historical figures.  Julian Fellowes  did something similar  in Downton  Abbey ( using  Highclere  Castle, the Herbert family seat and  period  history as a source ),  but at least Fellowes had the integrity to  create  FICTIONAL characters for  the story lines and only indirectly maligned  real people."

In the  ITV series the pleasantly  watchable  5- foot -6 inch  26- year- old  Amy Wren     played the  5 foot-0 inches   Lady Evelyn Herbert.  The dashing 30-year-old  actor Max Irons played Carter.

Cross  draws attention to the fact that  " In 1921  the real Lady Evelyn was aged 20, Carter was aged 45.  'It’s Tommyrot' ( one of Carter’s  favourite phrases), to insinuate anything  beyond a mutual affection and respect, something close  but  not  intimate  that had formed over the many years that Carter spent in and around the Carnarvon household.  Carter’s autistic nature made him awkward in all matters of relationships with women and men.  

Lady Evelyn Herbert  loved Lord Carnarvon,  the man she called ‘Pugs’, the man she thought was her real father. "  A story hangs there as set out in several books by William Cross, FSA Scot.

Cross  adds ".. the reality makes a  surprising twist on all the fickle fiction.... 

Howard Carter loved his patron  Lord Carnarvon, afterall, they were ‘an item’."

      

More details of the interaction between Carnarvon, Carter and Lady Evelyn Herbert  and the ultimate  fate of each of them  can be found in a new and controversial book   " Carnarvon, Carter and Tutankhamun Revisited: The Hidden Truths and Doomed Relationships" by William Cross, FSA Scot.

                            

The above book is available directly from William Cross

 or via Amazon.