Hons and Rebels: The Mitford Family Memoir

Description

First published in 1960, Jessica Mitford's autobiography is an account of the enclosed and eccentric childhood through which Nancy, Diana, Pam, Unity, Decca and Debo lived. In writing of their upbringing between the wars she also writes of her own commitment to communism and of her elopement to the Spanish Civil War with Esmond Romilly. Jessica Mitford is the author of "The American Way of Death" and has recently published a biography of Grace Darling entitled "Grace had an English Heart".

Jessica Mitford was the fifth of the six Mitford daughters and always the rebel among her sisters - Nancy, Pam, Diana, Unity and Debo. At the age of 19 she eloped to the Spanish Civil War with her cousin, Esmond Romilly and the two of them moved to the US in 1939. Esmond Romilly died in action in 1941 and Jessica later married Bob Treuhaft, a lawyer, with whom she lived in California. A one-time member of the American Communist Party, Jessica was a frequent target for the House Committee of Un-American Activities and was a passionate supporter of civil rights. Previous titles: The American Way of Death Revisited (Bfmt Dec 00); Hons and Rebels; Grace Had an English Heart; Poison Penmanship; Daughters and Rebels: An Autobiography; The Making of a Muckraker; A Fine Old Conflict

More than an extremely amusing autobiography ... she has evoked a whole generation. Her book is full of the music of time * SUNDAY TIMES * [An] uproarious yet deadly portrait of family life and family politics ... It evokes the atmosphere of the 1930s with more feeling than almost any other book of the period -- Christopher Hitchens * THE ATLANTIC * Wonderfully funny and very poignant -- Philip Toynbee Stunning. Reads like an extravagantly mannered fiction, except that it is all fabulously true ... Miss Mitford is at once touching and wildly funny, and there is not one of highly coloured characters that is not violently alive and uncomfortably kicking -- Siriol Hugh-Jones * TATLER * This book is just about my favourite book of all time ... I'm not entirely convinced I could like somebody who didn't like this book ... it's funny and moving and gives you an insight into this extraordinary moment as the war is about to begin ... it's so vivid, and what's more, it's incredibly current -- Robert Rinder * A GOOD READ, BBC Radio 4 * Her awareness of where she's from and what she had is astonishing ... to maintain that kind of awareness is astonishing, and she is very funny, but she also writes very well ... she mixes the hugely political, the very sweeping things, with intensely personal moments -- Stella Duffy * A GOOD READ, BBC Radio 4 * What is really quite amazing about this book, which I have read many, many times, and love ... [is] she's not La Pasionaria, she's not some really left-wing heroine, but she is amazing to have got from where she started to where she ended up -- Harriett Gilbert * A GOOD READ, BBC Radio 4 *