Hons and Rebels (New York Review Books Classics)
Categories: Kindle Store, Kindle eBooks, Politics & Social Sciences

Jessica Mitford, the great muckraking journalist, was part of a legendary English aristocratic family. 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 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 . Hons and Rebels is the hugely entertaining tale of Mitford&apos;s upbringing, which was, as she dryly remarks, “not exactly conventional. . . 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&apos;s face when it is laying an egg. . . . 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&apos;s world as smothering as it was singular and, determined to escape it, she eloped with Esmond Romilly, Churchill&apos;s nephew, to go fight in the Spanish Civil War. The ensuing scandal, in which a British destroyer was dispatched to recover the two truants, inspires some of Mitford&apos;s funniest, and most pointed, pages. A 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&apos;s art.


Sticky notes: On Kindle Scribe
Page Flip: Enabled
Language: English
File size: 4096 KB
Publisher: NYRB Classics
Print length: 226 pages
Publication date: November 22, 2016
Enhanced typesetting: Enabled
Word Wise: Enabled
subtitle: Kindle Edition
author: Visit Amazon's Jessica Mitford Page search results Jessica Mitford Christopher Hitchens