‘A marvellous idea flashed into my mind – one of those ideas to be cherished, polished, perfected until it can become a reality. I decided to run away from home . . . ’
So writes Jessica Mitford in this brilliantly funny and perceptive account of growing up as the fifth of the six notoriously headstrong Mitford sisters.
For the young Mitfords growing up at Swinbrook, the hideous, cold Cotswold house built by Lord Redesdale (‘Farve’), life was isolated and stiflingly uneventful, revolving around the church, the Conservative Party and Farve’s occasional dyspeptic excursions to the House of Lords. Lady Redesdale (‘Muv’) discouraged any contact with neighbouring children, and while favoured Tom, the youngest, was sent to boarding school, the plan for the girls was simple: a basic home education, followed by ‘coming out’ and a happy, well-heeled, well-connected marriage.
But Jessica, who was always known as Decca, had other ideas. By 1935, with her three older sisters already out in the world, she was seething with hatred and discontent, and when she met her charismatic cousin Esmond Romilly, home from fighting against Franco in the Spanish Civil War, it was love at first sight. They eloped, and this was the beginning of a story which took them from a precarious existence in the East End of London to selling silk stockings door-to-door in Washington and running a bar in Miami.
Hons and Rebels is a memoir that shocks and amuses by its sheer bravado, a remarkable portrait of an eccentric family by one of its most eccentric members. With the release of the long-overdue television dramatization of the Mitford sisters, Outrageous, we thought it only appropriate to share a passage from this fabulous memoir, which, as Janice Turner wrote in The Times ‘reads like a comic novel’.
With best wishes, as ever, from the SF staff
Isabel, Rebecca, Izzy, Edie & Jennie
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