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- BIOGRAPHY
Son of Sir Oswald Mosley, 5th Baronet, and Katharine Maud Edwards-Heathcote, Sir Oswald Mosley, 6th Baronet, was born 16 November 1896. On 11 May 1920 he married Lady Cynthia Blanche Curzon and they had three children. Lady Cynthia died on 16 May 1933 and in 1936 he married the Hon. Diana Freeman-Mitford, divorced wife of Bryan Walter Guinness, 2nd Lord Moyne. Sir Oswald and Diana had two sons.
An English politician, Sir Oswald Mosley was successively Conservative, Independent and Labour M.P., was a member of the 1929 Labour government. He later resigned and became leader of the British Union of Fascists. Detained under the Defence Regulations during World War II, he founded a new 'Union' Movement in 1948. His vision of a politically and economically united Europe is embodied in his 'Europe: Faith and Plan'.
Until his late seventies Mosley was as he had been in middle age: alert in mind and, but for his bad leg, active in body. But from about his eightieth birthday, in 1976, old age caught up fast. Mentally the change was perhaps noticeable only to those who knew him well; but physically, he suddenly seemed really old. He moved slowly, limped more, Parkinson's disease set in and the drug he took for it sometimes made him fall over. He also seemed all at once to accept that he was old, and to tolerate the condition.
He died suddenly and peacefully, in his bed, in November 1980, at just eighty four. Guests who had been with him the previous weekend said he had been as lively and genial as ever; he had even been intending, a few days afterwards, to fly to London and appear on television.
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