In later years she demonstrated how she had worked hard all her career to campaign for others, for charity and to get women into the House of Lords. On 22 October 1958 she was created one of the first four life peeresses and introduced to the Lords. [9] Irene Curzon had an intimate insight into the life of the Duke of Windsor, his friendship and marriage to Wallis Simpson and the life of the House of Windsor, through her sister, Alexandra and her brother-in-law Major Edward Dudley Metcalfe, [3] best friend of Edward VIII. She saw the rise of British fascism through her sister Lady Cynthia Mosley and her other brother-in-law Sir Oswald Mosley, with whom she had a brief fling prior to their marriage. [1] [4] Personal life [ edit ] Mary Irene Curzon, Baroness Ravensdale, William Bruce Ellis Ranken, 1925.

She was portrayed by Flora Montgomery in the four-episode Channel Four (UK) television drama mini-series Mosley in 1998. It was based on the books Rules of the Game and Beyond the Pale by her nephew Nicholas Mosley, Mosley's son. She was survived by her four sons: Desmond Guinness; Jonathan Guinness, 3rd Baron Moyne; Alexander and Max Mosley. Her stepson Nicholas Mosley was a novelist who also wrote a critical memoir of his father for which Diana reportedly never forgave him, despite their previously close relationship. A great-granddaughter, Jasmine Guinness, a great-niece, Stella Tennant, a granddaughter, Daphne Guinness, and a grandson, Tom Guinness, are models. [42]Mosley's New Party became the British Union of Fascists (BUF) in 1932. As leader of the BUF, he publicly espoused antisemitism and sought alliances with other fascist leaders such as Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler. Fascist violence under Mosley's leadership culminated in the Battle of Cable Street, during which anti-fascist demonstrators including trade unionists, communists, anarchists, and British Jews successfully prevented the BUF from marching through London's East End. [6] [7] Both Victor Cazalet and Nevile Henderson proposed to her. She was briefly engaged to Miles Graham on the rebound from a long entanglement with Gordon Leith but never married or had children. [4] [6] She became a guardian to her sister Cynthia’s three children with Oswald Mosley following Cynthia’s death. She was particularly attached to Michael who was a small child when his mother died. She worried that she and her money might be seen primarily as useful accompaniments to a political career and yearned to marry a man who would refuse to leave his wife. [4] In the 1944 World War II novel Kaputt by Curzio Malaparte, Mosley appears in an important dream sequence. This happens in chapter IV of the book that is based on the writer's experiences in Moldavia, just before he recounts his first hand experiences of the Iași pogrom. Irene was born at 4 Carlton House Gardens, St James's the eldest child of George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston, and Mary Victoria Leiter, daughter of Levi Ziegler Leiter. She inherited her father's Barony of Ravensdale, County Derby, in the Peerage of the United Kingdom, on 20 March 1925, and was created a life peer as Baroness Ravensdale of Kedleston, of Kedleston, in the County of Derby, on 6 October 1958. [2] This allowed her to sit in the House of Lords prior to the passing of the Peerage Act 1963, which allowed suo jure hereditary peeresses to enter. She and her two younger sisters were memorialised by Anne de Courcy in The Viceroy's Daughters: the Lives of the Curzon Sisters. [1] Royal links [ edit ] I would like above all things to see you for a few moments. There is no good reason why you should see me as (1) I belong to the Labour Party in England who were so ridiculous and refused to allow you in, but also I belong to the ILP and we did our very best to make them change their minds, and (2) I am daughter of Lord Curzon who was Minister for Foreign Affairs in London when you were in Russia! On the other hand I am an ardent Socialist. I am a member of the House of Commons. I think less than nothing of the present Government. I have just finished reading your life which inspired me as no other book has done for ages. I am a great admirer of yours. These days when great men seem so very few and far between it would be a great privilege to meet one of the enduring figures of our age and I do hope with all my heart you will grant me that privilege. I need hardly say I come as a private person, not a journalist or anything but myself—I am on my way to Russia, I leave for Batum-Tiflis-Rostov-Kharkov and Moscow by boat Monday. I have come to Prinkipo this afternoon especially to try to see you, but if it were not convenient I could come out again any day till Monday. I do hope however you could allow me a few moments this afternoon.

a b c d Anne de Courcy (2002), The Viceroy's Daughters: the Lives of the Curzon Sisters , Preview, New York: W. Morrow, ISBN 0-06-621061-5 Mount, Ferdinand (6 July 2006). "Double-Barrelled Dolts". London Review of Books. Vol.28, no.13. ISSN 0260-9592 . Retrieved 28 February 2022. Pierre Sorlin (1991). European Cinemas, European Societies, 1939–1990. Psychology Press. pp.65–66. ISBN 978-0-415-05671-7. Archived from the original on 1 May 2016 . Retrieved 9 February 2014.Philpot, Robert. "The true history behind London's much-lauded anti-fascist Battle of Cable Street". www.timesofisrael.com . Retrieved 4 February 2021. In Guy Walters' The Leader, Mosley has taken power as "The Leader" of Great Britain in 1937. King Edward VIII is still on the throne after his marriage, Winston Churchill is a prisoner on the Isle of Man, and prime minister Mosley is conspiring with Adolf Hitler about the fate of Britain's Jewish population.