Max Mosley's Mother, Lady Diana, Dead at 93

Lady Diana Mosley, mother of FIA president Max Mosley, has passed away on Monday in Paris, France, at the age of 93.

A death notice, published in today's edition of Britain's The Times, states she had died peacefully. No other details were provided by the family.

Lady Mosley was born Diana Freeman-Mitford on June 17th 1910; among her sisters was author Nancy Mitford. She was an accomplished interior decorator and a writer - her autobiography "A Life of Contrasts", first published in the late 1970s, was critically-acclaimed as well as a best seller. She was close friends with author Evelyn Waugh and British Prime Minister Winston Churchil.

Diana married powerful brewing heir Bryan Guinness at the age of 18 but left him after four years for Sir Oswald Mosley, most noteworthy as the leader of the British League of Fascists in the late 1930s. The couple married in 1936 at the house of Germany's chief of propaganda, Josef Goebbels. Among their few wedding guests was Adolf Hitler.

Just after Max was born in 1940, the Mosley couple were imprisoned in England for their political views under the controversial Regulation 18B, which permitted internment without trial, "in the interests of the public safety or defense of the realm." Nancy Mitford later described the events of that era as follows: "But we were young and high spirited then and didn't know about Buchenwald."

However, MI5 documents that were released to the public less than a year ago revealed that Diana Mosley was regarded as the greater threat. "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," a report stated. "[She] 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."

After his health deteriorated, Sir Oswald Mosley was released from jail - Lady Diana and himself were imprisoned for three years - and in the 1950s the Mosley family moved to France, where Sir Oswald died in 1980. Lady Diana remained in Paris until her death.

In an interview with Atlas F1 two years ago, Max Mosley himself said: "When you are a child, everything is natural - normal you think. It [the family's controversial nature] was always there.

"But you have got to remember that my father started life in politics at the age of 21, just 22, as a conservative MP, then he was a labor MP, then he was in the labor government: so he had a whole conventional political career [and] behind the scenes he was still friendly with a great many of the conventional politicians in England, and so it wasn't quite like being sort of right out [of it]. The general public probably saw him as a strange person but it was a very curious thing, a strange sort of family.

"Take my mother, for example: [through family connections] Winston Churchill was more or less like an uncle to my mother. She was very, very close to Churchill. And she was friendly with Hitler as well; she was probably about the only person around who was!"

He went on to say that "there was always a certain amount of trouble [being the son of Sir Oswald] until I came into motor racing. And in one of the first races I ever took part in there was a list of people when they put the practice times up as they do. Everyone stood around looking at the times.

"All the competitors in that class of racing looking at the list and they came to my name and I heard somebody say, 'Mosley, Max Mosley, he must be some relation of Alf Mosley, the coachbuilder.' And I thought to myself, 'I've found a world where they don't know about Oswald Mosley.' And it has always been a bit like that in motor racing: nobody gives a darn."