Hons and Rebels: The Mitford Family Memoir (W&N Essentials) - Softcover

Mitford, Jessica

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0575400048 ISBN 13: 9780575400047

Publisher: W&N, 1999

Synopsis

'Whenever I read the words "Peer's Daughter" in a headline,' Lady Redesdale once sadly remarked, 'I know it's going to be something about one of you children.'

The Mitford family is one of the century's most enigmatic, made notorious by Nancy's novels, Diana's marriage to Sir Oswald Mosley, Unity's infatuation with Hitler, Debo's marriage to a duke and Jessica's passionate commitment to communism. Hons and Rebels is an enchanting and deeply absorbing memoir of an isolated and eccentric upbringing which conceals beneath its witty, light-hearted surface much wisdom and depth of feeling.

About this title

Review:

[An] uproarious yet deadly portrait of family life and family politics ... It evokes the atmosphere of the 1930s with more feeling than almost any other book of the period (Christopher Hitchens THE ATLANTIC)

More than an extremely amusing autobiography ... she has evoked a whole generation. Her book is full of the music of time (SUNDAY TIMES)

Wonderfully funny and very poignant (Philip Toynbee)

Stunning. Reads like an extravagantly mannered fiction, except that it is all fabulously true ... Miss Mitford is at once touching and wildly funny, and there is not one of highly coloured characters that is not violently alive and uncomfortably kicking (Siriol Hugh-Jones TATLER)

This book is just about my favourite book of all time ... I'm not entirely convinced I could like somebody who didn't like this book ... it's funny and moving and gives you an insight into this extraordinary moment as the war is about to begin ... it's so vivid, and what's more, it's incredibly current (Robert Rinder A GOOD READ, BBC Radio 4)

Her awareness of where she's from and what she had is astonishing ... to maintain that kind of awareness is astonishing, and she is very funny, but she also writes very well ... she mixes the hugely political, the very sweeping things, with intensely personal moments (Stella Duffy A GOOD READ, BBC Radio 4)

What is really quite amazing about this book, which I have read many, many times, and love ... [is] she's not La Pasionaria, she's not some really left-wing heroine, but she is amazing to have got from where she started to where she ended up (Harriett Gilbert A GOOD READ, BBC Radio 4)

Book Description:

The classic memoir of one of the century's most extraordinary families

About this edition

• Publisher: W&N
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0575400048
• ISBN 13: 9780575400047
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 259