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Standard Issue Podcast

Here come the (incredibly divisive) girls

Standard Issue Podcast

Standard Issue

Society & Culture

4.71.1K Ratings

🗓️ 2 September 2025

⏱️ 24 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

A century after their birth, the Mitford Sisters continue to fascinate and appal in equal measure. As a new play about them, The Party Girls, opens at The Marlowe in Canterbury, Hannah chats to playwright Amy Rosenthal about why their stories still resonate, sisterhood and the frivolity of evil. Tickets for The Party Girls are here: https://showtours.co.uk/the-party-girls-tour-dates/ More info about becoming a Standard Issue supporter is here: Standard Issue Podcast | creating a magazine for ears, by women for women | Patreon Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Standard issue for all women. Hello, Hannah here and welcome to Tuesday's podcast. Lots of stuff

0:07.0

coming up later this week to enjoy. Tomorrow will be Jen's pick, inrated or dated, and we're

0:12.0

going to be watching postcards from the edge. Meryl Streep, Shirley MacLean, Jean Hackman, Annette

0:18.6

Benning, all speaking dialogue written by Carrie Fisher. What is not to like?

0:24.3

I suppose that's a bit of a spoiler, isn't it? Anyway, talking of films on Friday in flicking,

0:30.5

Josrat Mickey and I are going to be talking about better man and trying to make head or monkey's tail of it.

0:39.4

And on Thursday, the summer break is over, so Mick and I will be returning with the

0:44.9

first Bush Telegraph in ages. On to today's podcast, in which I'm talking to playwright

0:50.8

Amy Rosenthal about the party girls, which is opening this week at the Marlowe in Canterbury before going on a tour around the country.

0:59.7

Amy is the daughter of another writer, Jack Rosenthal, which I am mentioning because I bring him up in this interview.

1:06.5

And her mum, who she also brings up, is the actress Maureen Lippmann, although you may well have spotted that without me mentioning it,

1:13.9

because wow, do they sound similar.

1:17.2

Now, if you don't know who the Mithfords are, let me give you a quick lesson.

1:21.7

There were seven siblings born into the British aristocracy between 1904 and 1920.

1:31.0

Pam, the second child and Tom, only boy don't appear in Amy's play for reasons we discuss, but the five most famous Medford sisters

1:36.8

who were rarely out of the papers in their lifetimes do. Nancy, the eldest, went on to become a celebrated novelist. Diana was married to one

1:48.3

of the heirs to the Guinness fortune and then caused an enormous scandal by leaving to start

1:53.5

an affair with and eventually marrying Oswald Mosley, the leader of the British Union of

1:59.8

fascists.

2:06.1

Jessica was a communist who ran off with Churchill's nephew to join the Spanish Civil War and later moved to America, where she involved herself in a number of causes, including

2:10.5

civil rights. Unity became a Hitler mega fan and moved to Germany in order to befriend him

2:16.6

and was surprisingly successful.

...

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