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

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When war comes it destroys everything, but Linda maintains no regrets. “Don’t pity me,” she tells her best friend and cousin, Fanny. “I’ve had eleven months of perfect and unalloyed happiness, very few people can say that, in the course of long long lives, I imagine.” So it should be very exciting to read the story of her growing up. Jessica had a very large family, and her sisters were all just as notorious and exciting as she was in different ways. But not all of them were as smart about the world. Diana fell in love with Oswald Moseley, the English fascist, and was ostracized from polite society as a traitor for most of her life. Unity's fate was even more horrific, she fell in love with Adolph Hitler, became a fanatical "Jew-hater" (in her own words) and then tried to kill herself when England declared war on Nazi Germany. In a ghastly accident, the bullet lodged in her head and she became permanently brain-damaged, only to die several years later. This is a book about wanting life to start, about the fizzing adventure of being young, which I appreciate all the more now I’m no longer young myself.’ Obra de costumbrismo social de la época de entreguerras; biografía sobre una familia que rompió con todos los moldes de su época; ensayo sobre una guerra; crónica sobre un mundo convulso y en pleno cambio; historia iniciativa sobre una joven a la que vemos madurar a través de las páginas que ella misma narra… “Nobles y Rebeldes” es todo eso y más. Pero como señala la acertada introducción que podemos encontrar al principio del libro, lo que subyace en el fondo es una historia de amor breve pero intensa, con una pareja apasionadamente enamorada de ellos y de la vida, ejemplo de una juventud idealista que se enfrenta al odio, la guerra y la oposición social; dispuesta a luchar por sus convicciones políticas y vitales. Además la edición publicada por Libros del Asteroide viene con unas fotografías de los protagonistas de la obra y sus familiares en las páginas finales. Después de leer el libro es imposible no contemplarlas con un pequeño nudo en el estómago, siendo plenamente conscientes de las existencias azorosas y brillantes que todos ellos llevaron. Si hay algo que no se puede decir de Jessica, Esmond y el resto de las hermanas Mitford es que no se contentaron con lo que tenían, fueron estrellas que refulgieron hasta su extinción. It is unlikely that I’ll ever run out of Mitfordia! And there’s another book coming out about them soon, I think.

Hons and Rebels on Apple Books ‎Hons and Rebels on Apple Books

Both Diana and Pamela, however, lived out their postwar lives without major incident. They were not, we might say now, really “canceled.” Diana died in 2003 in Paris, aged 93, leaving behind a diamond swastika. Pamela, one of the two quietest Mitford sisters, died in 1994, aged 86, after having spent the last 40 years of her life living on a country estate as the lover of an Italian horsewoman. (Deborah, the other quiet one, married a duke and devoted her life to caring for his stately home.)Nobles y rebeldes. Título original: Hons and Rebels. Traducción de Patricia Antón. Introducción de Christopher Hitchens.

the Mitford gels again | Biography books | The Bring on the Mitford gels again | Biography books | The

It was a schoolroom joke that Unity was a Nazi, and Jessica (Decca) a Communist - they had competing posters of Hitler and Lenin on their walls - but the joke went very sour once they left the schoolroom. Unity insisted on being 'finished' in Munich instead of in Paris like her sisters, and hung around the Osteria Bavaria until she caught Hitler's eye. Such is the enormous charm of the Love duology that it has powered an entire industry of fascination with the Mitfords — the charm of those novels, and the political extremes of the world in which they were produced. It’s no secret that I’m a longstanding fan of the Mitfords – or, at least, of reading about them. 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. 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. I was chastised. I was told I should read her letters and her books, and that thus I would come to like her more. Finally – FINALLY – I have read Hons and Rebels (1960). Do I like her more? Maybe.More than an extremely amusing autobiography...she has evoked a whole generation. Her book is full of the music of time. The memoir is chopped short at this point, when her husband leaves for Canada to enlist, having ensconced his pregnant wife in the home of some wealthy Americans (on whom she also looks down) who don't quite realise she is being foisted on them for the duration. One wonders how long the marriage would have lasted if he had returned from the front.

Hons and Rebels - Jessica Mitford - Google Books

I love all things Mitford, and when I read Hons and Rebels some years ago I found I liked Jessica more than I had thought I would. She was quite extraordinary and her story adds to all those other Mitford stories that we know so well. Reply Hons and Rebels, originally published in the United States under the title Daughters and Rebels, [1] is a 1960 autobiography by political activist Jessica Mitford, which describes her aristocratic childhood and the conflicts between her and her sisters Unity and Diana, who were ardent supporters of Nazism. Jessica was a supporter of Communism and eloped with her second cousin, Esmond Romilly, to fight with the Loyalists in the Spanish Civil War, [2] and Diana grew up to marry Sir Oswald Mosley, the leader of the British Union of Fascists. Unity befriended Nazi leader Hitler, [3] who praised her as an ideal of Aryan beauty. PDF / EPUB File Name: Hons_and_Rebels_-_Jessica_Mitford.pdf, Hons_and_Rebels_-_Jessica_Mitford.epub I really enjoyed this book. One gets a different perspective of the Mitfords, a perspective from within. Jessica tells of her life and her family from her point of view. Events are told with immediacy, with a girlish gush of enthusiasm that feels thoroughly honest, genuine, youthful and engaging. Oh, the joys of being in a master's hands. Mitford dashes off, apparently effortlessly, sketches of her bizarre family, never straying into hatefulness even where antipathy exists. Her completely unconventional upbringing wuth a mother who refused to vaccinate her (a decision with a horrible, tragic cost later: Mitford contracted measles and gave them to her newborn daughter, who died as a result), contending that "the Good Body" knew its stuff, and a father whose major occupations appear to have been shouting and stomping and campaigning for Conservative politicians. Her wildly disparate sisters, novelist Nancy as the eldest and the most remote from Jessica; Diana, the great beauty and future Fascist; and Unity, the tragic figure of the family, a giant Valkyrie (ironically enough, this is also her middle name!) with an outsized personality to match, whose horrible fate was to try unsuccessfully to kill herself when her beloved Nazi Germany made war on her homeland. (The other sisters, Pam and Deborah, pretty much don't figure into Jessica's life, and her brother Tom was so much older he was more of a visiting uncle.)This is a great book and I think it’s very true what you say about the sisters being partly responsible for their own myth-making.

Rereading: Hons and Rebels by Jessica Mitford review — a

But the new Pursuit of Love does provide us with an opportunity to consider what remains valuable about The Pursuit of Love — and, by extension, what is valuable about the history of the Mitfords altogether. That’s the sensibility that breathes through their best work: a sense of joy and play that continues through brutal, bloody moments of history. Diana was arrested, in part, because of Nancy, who informed on her Nazi sisters to the British authorities. “She is a ruthless and shrewd egotist, a devoted fascist and admirer of Hitler and sincerely desires the downfall of England and democracy in general,” Nancy told MI5 of Diana. Nancy also warned authorities of her sister Pamela, whom Nancy said was a virulent anti-Semite. Pamela and her husband, Nancy wrote, “had been heard to declare a) that all Jews in England should be killed and b) that the war should be stopped now ‘before we lose any more money.’” Thank you Karen! It is intriguing, to find such a fascinating and varied bunch – impossible to agree with them all, but definitely possible to find them all interesting! Reply Actually, this article from The New Yorker about Jessica’s letters explains her relationship with her family very well. The audiobook I listened to is narrated by Jenny Agutter. It is based on the book’s 1989 edition which restores that which had been removed from the original 1960 edition. The narration is excellent. I adored the different inflections used for Americans and Brits.Just as a sidenote, I actually think the picture on the cover of the NYRB Classics edition of this book is of Jessica and Unity as children, now that I look at it. (I took a different copy out from the library) That does add a certain poignancy to the story. For some reasons, I didn’t realize this was a Mitford biography! What a fascinating family 🙂 Jessica Mitford had a large part in a book I read recently about the civil rights movement in the US called The Eyes of Willie McGee. I got a literary girl crush on her in that book and I think I’ll have to look into this one now, too! Thanks so much for a great review!