British Nobility, Fascist Politician. He was a leading figure in the British fascist movement during the 20th century. Born the eldest of three sons of Sir Oswald, 5th Baronet, he was a member of an old Staffordshire family. His parents separated when he was five, and he was educated at Winchester and the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, but was expelled for misbehaving. When World War I started, he joined the 16th Queen's Lancers on the Western Front in France, but soon transferred to the Royal Flying Corps, but not in the position of pilot. In a flight at Shoreham-on-Sea in Sussex, in an attempt to impress his mother, he was injured in a crash and for the rest of his life, he walked with a painful limp. He was labeled as brave but irresponsible. In 1920, he married Lady Cynthia Curzon, the daughter of the former Foreign Secretary and Viceroy of India. They had two sons and a daughter. As a member of the Conservative Party, he was elected as a Member of Parliament for Harrow from 1918 to 1924, for Smethwick from 1926 to 1931 as a member of the Independent Party, and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in the Labour Government of 1929 to 1931. After his suggestions on unemployment policies were vetoed by the Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, he resigned from Parliament in 1931. His first resignation from Parliament was in 1920 after the British government sent the Black and Tans into Ireland to police during the Irish War of Independence. He had been one of the youngest Members of Parliament. In March of 1931, Mosley left the Labour Party, along with his wife, who had been a Member of Parliament, and three other members, to form the New Party, which had nothing to do with fascism. The New Party had 24 candidates at the General Election that year and all were defeated. After a spring visit to Italy and being impressed with Benito Mussolini's fascist system of government, he founded the British Union of Fascists on October 1, 1932. Later that year, the New Party merged with the British Union of Fascists, which included the Blackshirts, the militant branch of the Fascists. On May 16, 1933, his wife died of peritonitis. At first, the B.U.F. was welcomed by some people, such as Lord Nuffield, as something which would stop Great Britain from turning Communist. However, after German dictator Adolph Hitler came to power, the British Union of Fascists became far more anti-Semitic, and the meeting held in 1934 at the Kensington Olympia ended in violence, as did the protest marches, which were led by Mosley and his Blackshirts down Cable Street, Brick Lane and other Jewish areas in London's East End. In October of 1936, at a wedding ceremony in Berlin, that Adolph Hitler was an invited guest, Mosley married Lady Diana Guinness, former wife of Lord Moyne, daughter of Lord Redesdale, and one of the six famous Mitford sisters. The couple had two sons. In the same year, the B.U.F. changed its name to the British Union of Fascists and National Socialists. Mosley was opposed to British participation in World War II, denouncing the conflict as a Jewish conspiracy to destroy the economy. In May of 1940, Sir Oswald and Lady Diana were interned without a trial under British Defense Regulation 18b, a governmental regulation to imprison people, who sympathized with the Nazi regime. He was imprisoned at Brixton Prison, then transferred to Holloway Prison, until November of 1943, when he was released on the grounds of ill-health. Politically, he was disillusioned as the B.U.F was disbanded. After the war, he lived away from the British public in Ireland, eventually relocating to France in 1951. He returned to England to attempt to form the Union Movement, but this had no success. Although he was a candidate for Parliament in two more elections, at North Kensington in 1959 and at Shoreditch in 1966, he lost both. Siding with Hitler had destroyed his political career. Over the years, he published at least eight books on his views on British politics. In 1968, he published his memoirs, "My Life," with a red book cover showing him in black uniform with right arm raised in a military salute. In his memoirs, he denied being an anti-Semite, although he had been an opponent of those British Jews who had wished to take the country into the war, and claimed, "I am not, never have been, and probably never will be a man of the right. My place was on the left and is now in the center of British politics." Two decades after Mosely's death in 1998, actor Jonathan Cake played the role of Mosely in a series that aired on British television. Comic writer P.G. Wodehouse presented Mosely as the recurring fictional character, "Roderick Spode, 7th Earl of Sidcup and leader of the Black Shorts". He was the subject of Elvis Costello's 1977 song, "Less Than Zero," although many misunderstood the lyrics and thought it was about Lee Harvey Oswald. He was cremated in Paris and his ashes were scattered in the garden of his home, which has been sold and is no longer in the possession of his family.