But if it is acceptable to cheer on a biography because you like the writer so much (heart you, Debo), then it’s equally acceptable to do the reverse. And here, as with a novel, it isn’t the be all and end all.
I’ll get in there early: if I were writing a scholarly book review, whether or not I like the woman would be completely immaterial. Finally – FINALLY – I have read Hons and Rebels (1960). I was told I should read her letters and her books, and that thus I would come to like her more. The one whom I didn’t much like (besides Unity, obvs, though her regression after shooting herself is fascinating to see in letter-form) was Jessica.
Debo has an eternal place in my heart, but, even though none of the others quite made it there, I still adored reading the letters between all six sisters. It’s no secret that I’m a longstanding fan of the Mitfords – or, at least, of reading about them. 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.I’ve borrowed this image from Karyn, who reviewed it here: (Hope that’s ok, Karyn!) 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.
0 kommentar(er)
