A Taste of Slightly Foxed

The combination of the current issue of the quarterly – Issue 67 – and Hons and Rebels by Jessica Mitford makes an ideal introduction to the world of Slightly Foxed and a perfect present.

Slightly Foxed Issue 67

In this issue: Selina Hastings meets a Mitford • David Fleming goes down with the Titanic • Laura Freeman accepts an invitation to the waltz • Tim Pears experiences the force of history • Polly Devlin is transported to Hollywood • Kristian Doyle loafs by the Seine • Rose Baring does the rounds with a country GP • Ian Thomson travels to Estonia and the world of Jaan Kross • Hazel Wood visits the Pimpernel Press • Edmund Gordon parties with Henry Green , and much more besides . . .

SF Edition, Hons and Rebels (No. 52)

‘It was becoming rather apparent by this year of 1935 that not all of us were turning out quite according to plan,’ writes Jessica Mitford in this brilliantly funny and perceptive account of growing up as the fifth of the six notoriously headstrong Mitford sisters. And it was perhaps Jessica – always known as Decca – the lifelong hard-line socialist, who turned out least ‘according to plan’ of them all.

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 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.