She died at the age of seventy-eight while working on a follow-up to The American Way of Death, for which, with characteristic humor, she proposed the title “Death Warmed Over.”Ĭhristopher Hitchens (1949–2011) was a British-American journalist and social critic. A brilliant muckraking journalist, Mitford was the author of, among other works, a memoir of her youth, Hons and Rebels a study of the funeral industry, The American Way of Death and Kind and Usual Punishment: The Prison Business. Romilly was killed in World War II, and Mitford moved to America, where she married the lawyer and political activist Robert Treuhaft. Rebelling against her family’s hidebound conservatism, Mitford became an outspoken socialist and, with her second cousin and husband-to-be Esmond Romilly, ran away to fight against Franco in the Spanish Civil War. Jessica Mitford (1917–1996) was the daughter of Lord and Lady Redesdale, and she and her five sisters and one brother grew up in isolation on their parents’ Cotswold estate. 'synopsis' may belong to another edition of this title. The ensuing scandal, in which a British destroyer was dispatched to recover the two truants, inspires some of Mitford's funniest, and most pointed, pages.Ī family portrait, a tale of youthful folly and high-spirited adventure, a study in social history, a love story, Hons and Rebels is a delightful contribution to the autobiographer's art. Unity and I made up a complete language called Boudledidge, unintelligible to any but ourselves, in which we translated various dirty songs (for safe singing in front of the grown-ups).” But Mitford found her family's world as smothering as it was singular and, determined to escape it, she eloped with Esmond Romilly, Churchill's nephew, to go fight in the Spanish Civil War. Debo spent silent hours in the chicken house learning to do an exact imitation of the look of pained concentration that comes over a hen's face when it is laying an egg.

Hons and Rebels is the hugely entertaining tale of Mitford's upbringing, which was, as she dryly remarks, “not exactly conventional.

Jessica swung left and moved to America, where she took part in the civil rights movement and wrote her classic exposé of the undertaking business, The American Way of Death.

Her sisters included Nancy, doyenne of the 1920s London smart set and a noted novelist and biographer Diana, wife to the English fascist chief Sir Oswald Mosley Unity, who fell head over in heels in love with Hitler and Deborah, later the Duchess of Devonshire.

Jessica Mitford, the great muckraking journalist, was part of a legendary English aristocratic family.

Hons and rebels review