Hons and rebels

Book info: Hons and rebels (Hardcover, 222 pages – Victor Gollancz LTD, 1977) – Victor Gollancz LTD, 1977. Language: Eng.

Condition: Very Good

The childhood which Jessica Mitford describes in the first pages of her entrancing and unusual autobiography belongs to a period no further back than the twenties; but for a variety of reasons, not the least of them the eccentricity of her parents, she might easily be writing about the Victorian era. Isolated in their big house near the village of Swinbrook, in the Colswolds, the seven children lived in a world of their own, sporadically educated by their mother and a series of governesses, dependent on one another for entertainment and intellectual and emotional development. Small wonder that, as they grew up, they all showed such very marked individuality. Miss Mitford paints a fascinating and lively picture of her remarkable relations. First there was her father, Lord Redesdale, immortalized by his eldest daughter Nancy as Uncle Matthew in Love in a Cold Climate and The Pursuit of Love. A man of fierce and irrational opinions, and terrifying rages, he was a law unto himself. So, in a different way, was Lady Redesdale, who brought up her children after a method all her own. There was Nancy, the eldest daughter, with her sharp tongue and penetrating emerald eyes, the pioneer in al lthe children's struggle for freedom, Diana, who, after marriage into the Guinness family and a fling with the Bright Young Peope, subsequently married Sir Oswald Mosely; Unity, dedicated follower of Hitler; Deborah, who all her childhood wanted to be a duchess, and, like the rest of her strongminded sisters, eventually became one... It is an enchanting and deeply absorbing story, which conceals beneath its witty, light-hearted surface much wisdom and depth of feeling. In its description of the childhood of the six Mitford girls, and of the way of life which must be virtually unique, it is an engrossing page of history; and there is extraordinary interest in its picture of a family so many of whom have become famous for such very diverse reasons, It is a rare treat.