Hons and Rebels

I first learned of the story of the Mitford sisters, English aristocrats who turned one family into a whole political spectrum, on the excellent pod: The Rest is History.  

The sisters, with their snobbish, idiosyncratic in-speak (“Oh how wet!”) serve as a lens into a period of early turn of the century Europe. Nancy became a sharp-tongued novelist, Diana and Unity flirted disastrously with fascism (Unity obsessively with Hitler), while Jessica (“Decca”) bolted the manor for communism and a muckraking life in America; leaving Pamela and Deborah to play the “quieter” foils. There’s currently a mini-boom in the Mitford Sister extended universe, with Carla Kaplan’s new Jessica biography Troublemaker and Mimi Pond’s graphic memoir/biography Do Admit!

But a deeper cut might be Hons and Rebels, Jessica (“Decca”) Mitford’s wickedly funny, sharply observant memoir of growing up among the “Mad Mitfords” and then detonating her aristocratic upbringing by running off toward radical politics and real life. I found this to be a fascinating peak inside what has been described as “the frivolity of evil.”