BritBox’s Outrageous Has a Surprising Kennedy Connection

On June 29, 1963, five months before his assassination, President John F. Kennedy quietly visited the grave of his younger sister Kathleen, buried in the churchyard of St. Peter’s Church, located in the tiny East Midlands village of Edensor in England. It was an “off the books” stop, coming at the end of JFK’s historic trip to West Germany, including West Berlin, and his ancestral homeland of Ireland. The president appeared reluctant to bring attention to the fact that his closest sibling lay in a Protestant cemetery, to say nothing of its being the final resting place for generations of Dukes and Duchesses of Devonshire—members of a historically anti-Catholic family that rose to prominence under the Tudor dynasty.

Kathleen, or Kick, as she was known, was once in line to become the Duchess of Devonshire. But since this was the Kennedys, as you would expect, fate intervened. Instead, a young woman named Deborah Mitford, nicknamed Debo, took her place, serving as the duchess until her death in 2014 (Prince Charles and Camilla attended her funeral). The two women—Kick and Debo, sisters-in-law in life—today rest near each other in the Cavendish family graveyard. Their story is extraordinary and little explored, as the Kennedy family, especially matriarch Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, found Kick’s’s flirt with Protestant royalty painful—not to be discussed within the family following her sudden death in 1948.

But there is an even darker backstory involving Debo Mitford’s sisters, one that raises the intriguing question of how those relationships might have impacted JFK’s political career.

The Kennedy-Fitzgerald brand was built on the legend of Irish Catholic immigrants, who, oppressed by the British during the famine, migrated to Boston, ran saloons, entered politics, and brought themselves up in the world through brains, cunning, charm, and merit. Would a duchess in the family have cast a different shadow on JFK’s political image?

This tale has astonishing twists and turns, starting with the Mitford sisters themselves. Fortunately for us, BritBox’s current series Outrageous revisits the wild but true story of six sisters (and one brother) who captured the British imagination in the lead-up to World War II. The sisters—Nancy, Pam, Diana, Unity, Jessica, and Deborah—had their own strong and eccentric personalities and followed radically different paths. The descent into fascism across Europe in the 1930s, including a surprisingly malignant movement within Great Britain, left the family divided and at crosscurrents, emotionally and politically. The echoes to current politics in the US are striking.

Two of Deborah’s sisters (she was the youngest) became incredibly intertwined with leading fascists in Europe. Diana, considered the most beautiful, left a marriage to one of the wealthiest Brits of the time to carry on an affair with Sir Oswald Mosley, the leader of the British Union of Fascists. Diana and Mosley were married secretly in 1936 in Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels’s drawing room in Berlin, with the chancellor of Germany, Adolf Hitler, appearing as an honored guest.

Deborah’s sister Unity stalked Hitler in Munich at a restaurant he frequented during his rise to power. She eventually caught his eye and was taken into his innermost circle—a competitor of sorts to girlfriend Eva Braun. Remarkably, Unity met with Hitler on more than a hundred occasions and spent considerable private time with him as he consolidated his rule and began his campaign of territorial expansion. Unity stood next to Hitler in Vienna when he announced the Anschluss, or annexation of Austria, in March 1938.

Enter Kick Kennedy. At exactly this moment, she arrived in London with her family. President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Joe Kennedy Sr. as ambassador to the United Kingdom, a nod to a very wealthy contributor. Kick, 18, was part of a celebrated family with nine children. Joe Kennedy, though he deeply loved his children, used them as political props—group photos abound. Rose Kennedy yearned to make a splash in English society and saw an opportunity to do so with Kick’s “coming out” as a debutante during the 1938 London season. (Sister Rosemary joined, but she labored under substantial development disabilities.)

One woman, Lady Nancy Astor, Viscountess of Astor, became Kick’s unofficial sponsor in London. She was the most famous of American expatriates. “From the moment Nancy set eyes on Kick Kennedy,” one of Kick’s biographers, Paula Byrne, wrote, “she sensed a kindred spirit.” Nancy Astor fit the mold of a wealthy American woman marrying into the British aristocracy. Winston Churchill’s mother, Jennie Jerome, daughter of a prosperous American financier, was another example, marrying Lord Randolph Churchill, son of the Duke of Marlborough, in 1874.

The pattern of such mixed marriages arose not only because wealthy Americans coveted an aristocratic title and country estate, but also because, just as importantly, money was needed to run the massive estates. Further, many Brits of nobility perceived that their “stock” at times became “exhausted” through intermarriages and that the family needed to “refresh their blue blood by an infusion of red.”

“At such times,” Kick historian Barbara Leaming wrote, “instead of marrying aristocrats they chose their partners from other, presumably tougher and more vigorous strata of society.” The Kennedys fit that bill.

Rose Kennedy did not want her daughter marrying into the “aristocratic cousinhood,” as it was called, mainly because all of these families were staunchly Protestant and virulently anti-Catholic. So one wonders what she expected when she launched Kick into London society.

Kick, with all the charm, confidence, and charisma of her older brothers, was an instant sensation from the moment she was introduced by Nancy Astor at Cliveden, the Astor’s country house near Taplow, Buckinghamshire. At Cliveden, Astor maintained a salon that exercised considerable influence in many fields, notably foreign affairs (Nancy was the first woman seated as a member of parliament (MP), serving from 1919 to 1945—an achievement Kick deeply admired). Members of the group were called the “Cliveden set.”

This is where Kick met Debo Mitford. Both were debutantes and participated in a dizzying round of balls, dinners, teas, races, and regattas in the summer of 1938. Debo did dance with John F. Kennedy at a ball given by Lady Louise Mountbatten in July, and she recorded her thoughts on Kick’s brother in her diary: “Rather boring but nice”—an assessment that would later change. (Dancing was all the rage at these social events, and Kick held a more generous opinion of her brother’s prowess, addressing several letters to him during this period with “Dear Twinkle-toes.”)

Kick and Debo would rise together in London society and play counterpoint to each other as they orbited two brothers who were potential heirs to the Cavendish dynasty—with the winner bound to become the Duchess of Devonshire, mistress of the palatial, Downton Abbey–like country estate known as Chatsworth House. The elder brother, Billy, Marquess of Hartington, and heir to the Duchy of Devonshire, was tall (at six foot four he towered over five-foot-three Kick), diffident, and much more reflective and restrained than his hyperactive younger brother, Andrew. Kick and Billy became a couple, while Debo Mitford and Andrew Cavendish paired off.

A war, though, would intercede. By the end of the summer of 1939, Hitler had signed a nonaggression pact with the Soviets and was now looking to conquer Poland. England had announced after the Czechoslovakian crisis that it would come to Poland’s defense if it were invaded. Germany did so on the first day of September, and England declared war on Germany on September 3, 1939. Joe Jr., Jack, and Kick walked from the American embassy to Westminster to hear Neville Chamberlain declare war. So did Rose and Joe Kennedy.

In Munich, a death drama played out. Unity and Diana Mitford had been warned by Hitler to leave Germany as war approached. Diana left, but Unity stayed behind, hoping a war could be avoided. When she learned that England had declared war on Germany, she left a suicide note with a local official that included her autographed photo of Hitler and her special Nazi Party badge. Unity drove to Munich’s English Garden, took her pearl-handled pistol from her handbag, and shot herself in the temple. Remarkably, she survived with a bullet lodged in the back of her skull. She was returned to England via Switzerland months later; Hitler paid her medical bills. Rumors persisted that Unity had a sexual relationship with Hitler—and perhaps bore his child—but Hitler denied it. He told notorious Nazi filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, “She’s a very attractive girl, but I could never have an intimate relationship with a foreigner, no matter how beautiful she might be.” When Riefenstahl said he must be joking, he replied, “My feelings are so bound up with my patriotism that I could only love a German girl.”

Joe Kennedy sent his family home. His defeatist attitude about England’s prospects in a war against Germany—he believed the country would be “thrashed”—resulted in FDR’s forcing his resignation at the end of 1940.

Kick finagled her way back to England as a volunteer for the Red Cross in the summer of 1943. Her brother Jack made a name for himself in August with the sinking of PT-109 and his heroic efforts to save his crew. Joe Jr., a Navy pilot, was stationed in England. Debo and Andrew had married in 1941, and she’d already given birth to two children, though one had died in infancy.

Kick resumed her relationship with Billy. They married on May 6, 1944. Lieutenant Joseph Kennedy, in naval attire, delivered Kick to the Chelsea Register Office for a simple, seven-minute ceremony. Debo, who had just given birth to a third child, a son named Peregrine (who would become the 12th Duke of Devonshire), was unable to attend.

Billy and Kick had a month to be together after their marriage. When D-Day arrived on June 6, Billy told Kick, planes roaring overhead, that he was sure a second front had started. He was an officer of the illustrious Coldstream Guards, and the couple knew he faced long odds in the invasion of the continent. In a joint diary they kept, they registered the sadness of a love affair that, as Billy wrote, “seems to cause nothing but goodbyes.”

Kick busied herself by taking up her duties as Marchioness of Hartington, alongside her new sister-in-law, Lady Andrew Cavendish. They worked local fairs and carnivals with their mother-in-law, the Duchess of Devonshire. As things stood, Kick was in the position to assume the title of duchess in the event of the duke’s passing (he would, as it turned out, die unexpectedly of a heart attack in 1950 at the age of 55). Debo had no conception of inheriting the role.

Then two events entirely altered the narrative.

Joe Kennedy Jr. volunteered in mid-August for a mission to take out a V-1 (buzz bomb) launch site near Calais. His task was to guide a plane packed with explosives to a given altitude and then parachute out as the plane was remotely controlled to its destination—an exceptionally dangerous assignment. Joe and his copilot were killed when the plane exploded while still over Britain, just minutes before they could exit.

Kick flew to America to mourn with her family when the second catastrophe struck. While fighting with the 5th Coldstream Battalion in Belgium, Billy was shot dead as he led his troops in a furious assault on a German position in September.

With the death of Billy, his brother, Andrew, was now next in line to become the duke. Debo Mitford Cavendish instantly trumped Kick—their roles reversed. Within the span of four stunning weeks, the battle deaths of two young men—Joe Kennedy Jr. and Billy Cavendish—changed the complexion of world history. Jack would replace Joe as the Kennedy to run for president. Billy’s death removed Kick from the track to an aristocratic title that might have weighed heavily on Jack’s political career. This seems especially true given the vile Nazi affiliation of Debo’s sisters Diana and Unity. In the razor-close national election of 1960, might the stain of this shocking family relationship have been exploited by Richard Nixon and made a difference?

Kick, now the Dowager Marchioness of Hartington, stayed in England following the war. The Kennedy family did indeed hide her when Jack ran for Congress in 1946, though, after Congress recessed in 1947, he came to Ireland to stay with Kick in a castle, known as Lismore Castle, owned by the Cavendish family. Kick had been devastated by Billy’s death, writing to Jack, “It just seems that the pattern of life for me has been destroyed. At the moment I don’t fit into any design.” At Lismore, she took her older brother into her confidence and told him she had fallen in love with a married aristocrat, an earl named Peter Fitzwilliam—and they intended to wed after his divorce. The next spring, she and Fitzwilliam were killed in a plane crash on their way to vacation in the South of France. She was 28. Only Joe Kennedy Sr., then visiting Paris, attended the funeral. Rose refused to have Kick’s remains returned to America.

The Cavendish family buried Kick in the family plot at Edensor. Her tombstone was inscribed, “Joy she gave, Joy has she found.” JFK, having spent four glorious days in Ireland in June 1963, found himself in the awkward position of visiting his sister’s grave amongst the anti-Catholic, anti-Irish Devonshire nobles. The press was told of the side trip only after Air Force One lifted off from Shannon Airport. The visit was quick, but he wrote a touching note to the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire after returning to the White House, finding the arrangements she had made for his sister “touching and moving.” Five months later, he was dead.

All six episodes of the first season of BritBox’s Outrageous are available to watch now. The final episode ends before the Kennedys come to London, so if there is to be a second season (and current press makes it seem likely), it will be fascinating to see if Kick Kennedy—or even JFK, old Twinkle-toes—makes an appearance.