LONDON, Aug 13: Lady Diana Mosley, the widow of 1930s British fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley, has died at the age of 93 at her Paris home.

Diana Mosley, who lived a colourful and controversial life, was reported to have been surrounded by friends and family at her Paris flat when she died on Monday during a period of unusually hot weather and a week after suffering a slight stroke.

Among those Mosley counted in her circle of friends were former British war-time prime minister Winston Churchill, novelist Evelyn Waugh and poet John Betjeman.

Born Diana Freeman-Mitford, Mosley grew up in lavish surroundings, attending debutante functions and carving a name in society as one of the engaging Mitford sisters.

At the age of 18, she married wealthy heir Bryan Guinness.

But just three years later she met Sir Oswald and left her marriage to become the mistress of the man who was to set up the British Union of Fascists.

Throughout the 1930s, the couple courted fascism and Adolf Hitler even attended their wedding that was held in Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels’s drawing room in 1936.

But after war broke out, their well-known alliance with Hitler had turned them into outcasts and it was not long before Mosley and her husband were behind bars.

After a year Mosley was joined by her husband in Holloway prison in London where they spent three years —AFP