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A review by extemporalli
Hons and Rebels by Jessica Mitford
5.0
A wonderful memoir of the Mitford family, whom I suspect I will never tire of reading about. Jessica Mitford is wonderful, and quite aside from the more overtly wonderful character bits (the running away plan, the regret that she never pretended to be fascist so she could go to Germany, get close to Hitler and kill him) I thought one of the more complicated wonderful bits was where she thinks and writes about Unity - her sister who becomes a Nazi and shoots herself after war breaks out between Germany and England. Diana, the other sister who was a fascist, she clearly had absolutely no truck with, but Unity was more complicated and sad because they used to be so close and the communist vs. Nazi thing seemed almost like an adolescent game until it wasn't.
(There are some good Nancy bits in here too, but I almost think the best Nancy bit was in the retrospective preface Jessica wrote upon prepublication, where she writes in a cutting little PS: "Esmond was the original Teddy boy, wasn't he?" Jessica most of your life choices are great - but what Nancy says is true.)
(There are some good Nancy bits in here too, but I almost think the best Nancy bit was in the retrospective preface Jessica wrote upon prepublication, where she writes in a cutting little PS: "Esmond was the original Teddy boy, wasn't he?" Jessica most of your life choices are great - but what Nancy says is true.)