Nicholas Mosley, 3rd Baron Ravensdale

Nicholas Mosley, 3rd Baron Ravensdale (25 June 1923 – 28 February 2017), was a British peer, novelist and biographer. Two of his volumes of biography covered the life of his father, Sir Oswald Mosley, the founder of the British Union of Fascists.

Life

Mosley was born in London in 1923. He was the eldest son of Sir Oswald Mosley, 6th Baronet, a British politician, and his first wife, Lady Cynthia Mosley, a daughter of George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (a Viceroy of India and at the time of Mosley's birth Foreign Secretary). In 1932, Sir Oswald founded the British Union of Fascists and became an open supporter of Benito Mussolini. The following year, when he was only nine, Nicholas's mother, Lady Cynthia, died, and in 1936 Diana Mitford, one of the Mitford sisters, who was already his father's lover, became his stepmother. Mosley was educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford. In 1940, his father was interned because of his campaigning against the war with Germany. The younger Mosley was soon commissioned into the Rifle Brigade and saw active service in Italy, winning the Military Cross in 1945.

Mosley died on 28 February 2017 and is buried in the western side of Highgate Cemetery.

Personal life Mosley married twice and was the father of five children. On 14 November 1947, he married firstly Rosemary Laura Salmond (divorced 1974, died 1991), daughter of Sir John Maitland Salmond and the Honourable Monica Margaret Grenfell, and they had four children: Hon. Shaun Nicholas Mosley (5 August 1949 – 10 December 2009), married Theresa Clifford, and had six children, including Daniel Nicholas Mosley, 4th Baron Ravensdale. vol. 1 Beyond the Pale: Sir Oswald Mosley and Family 1933–1980 (Secker & Warburg, 1983) vol. 2 Rules of the Game / Beyond the Pale: Memoirs of Sir Oswald Mosley and Family (Dalkey Archive, 1991; Secker & Warburg, 1994) The Uses of Slime Mould: Essays of Four Decades (Dalkey Archive, 2004)

Other Efforts at Truth: An Autobiography (Secker & Warburg, 1994; Dalkey Archive, 1995) Time at War (Dalkey Archive, 2006) memoir Paradoxes of Peace, or the Presence of Infinity (Dalkey Archive, 2009)