Hons and Rebels

I've decided my next book is going to be "Hons and Rebels" by Jessica Mitford.
I've mentioned before that I have been following a train of thought with my recent choices of books. I am fascinated by the Mitford sisters. I'd read things here and there about them from time to time, and had always wanted to read more, but didn't come a biography, despite looking in a few bookshops. Then I found"The Mitford Sisters" by Mary S. Lovell and read it from cover to cover in about a week.
The Mitford family are an aristocratic British family, and their influence and events of their life span most of the 20th century. The daughters- Nancy, Pam, Diana, Unity, Jessica and Deborah (there was one unfortunate brother, Tom), were all Teutonically gorgeous and charming and winsome and clever and witty and just all round smashing.
What I find most amazing about the sisters, is their involvement in politics and political circles was quite significant, for women born between 1904 and 1920, and who received very little to no education (their father vehemently opposed education for women, which the girls' regretted their entire lives). Not only that, their political persuasion ranged wildly from right to left, covering all spheres and domains of political life, especially from the 30s onward.
I have mentioned Unity before (Unity Valkyrie Mitford, conceived in Swastika, Canada). She was one of these obsessive, swoony types, who decided to obsessively swoon over, of all people, Adolf Hitler. She became obsessed with him and would hang around the Osteria Bavaria, mooning about every day until he noticed her there and called her over. They had intermittent contact after this, enough for Eva Braun to write in her diary:

"She is known as the Valkyrie and looks the part, including her legs. I the mistress of the greatest man in Germany and the whole world, I sit here waiting while the sun mocks me through the window panes."

Unity's dearest sister, Diana, married the leader of the British Fascists, Oswald Mosley, outwardly a weedy loser with a little bitch moustache, whose "blackshirts" menaced London streets during the pre WWII days. A racist, fascist, egomaniac, and may I mention, she left the dreamy Bryan Guiness for this man who who modelled himself on the little dictator himself. I have also read Diana Mosley's biography, and whilst it is an ok read (an unbelievable amount of name dropping, and talk of sailing around the Mediterranean on their yacht for months because they were in exile from Britain? Give me a break), she does spend an awful lot of time defending the actions of Mosley and his thugs, and to an extent Hitler himself. She talks about his charisma, his gallantry, his respectful nature toward (Aryan) womankind whilst feigning ignorance over the Holocaust and even anti-Semitism of the time.
This might be more believable if her sister, The Valkyrie, hadn't written a letter to Der Sturmer, Germany's most rabidly anti-Semitic newspaper, which included the following passage:

"The English have no notion of the Jewish danger. Our worst Jews work only behind the scenes. We think with joy of the day when we will be able to say England for the English! Out with the Jews! Heil Hitler! P.S. please publish my name in full, I want everyone to know I am a Jew hater."

How embarrassing. I guess in the day you were allowed to be a Jew-hater, but not to say you were a Jew-hater.
Anyway, the day that the war broke out between Germany and Britain, Unity went to the English Garden in Munich and shot herself in the head. (Another example of a woman willing to commit suicide for Hitler.) She survived, for another 8 years, but was a bit kooky and died eventually.

Diana lived for about a thousand years and was as stunning in 2000 as she was in 1930, which is a bit annoying for an old leftie like myself.

Nancy (the eldest) was a bit of a leftie herself. She became a writer in Paris and two of her most famous works are "Love in a Cold Climate" and "The Pursuit of Love". I read these books a couple of weeks ago. They were pretty good.

Pam was the frumpy farmhand-type sister (although not frumpy at all), and married a similar farmhand-type and lived on a farm and not much else is known about her.

Deborah (Debo), the youngest, married a duke and became fabulously rich and had houses all over the place, and ended up being the only sister to remain in England (the rest living in Paris, Ireland or the USA).

And then there was Jessica (Decca), second youngest, who I think is the most interesting and likable of all the sisters. She always dreamed of running away, and had a running away fund from a super young age. She used to sell her Christmas presents to her sisters and keep the money to add to the fund. She was fabulously argumentative and controversial and left wing and was also a Communist (called the 'red sheep' of the family- great. She would hear all about her black sheep second cousin when she was growing up, Esmond Romilly, who the family detested, so when she was 19, she ran off and married him, and then they went to fight in the Spanish Civil War. After this, they migrated to the USA, then war broke out and Esmond died fighting the Nazis.
She remarried, and loved a generally fabulous, but difficult life, always fighting the good fight, writing an expose on the American funeral industry that was a huge controversy at the time, muckraking and exposing charlatans as a journalist. She was a huge civil rights campaigner and supported Martin Luther King and was barricaded in a church while the Ku Klux Klan were attacking outside.
Jessica had a huge influence on aspiring trailblazing women everywhere. One of her biggest fans is JK Rowling (of Harry Potter fame), who, as I do, loved how she never outgrew her adolescent idealism, only learned to approach it with cunning and sharp intelligence. Rowling even named her daughter after her.

I find it fascinating that two sisters, like Unity and Jessica (or Diana and Jessica) could have such polarising views on politics, despite being very close as children. The cover of Hons and Rebels shows Unity reading to Jessica as children. I don't think the book is Mein Kempf. I think it's extra relevant to me, as my family also has wildly varying political views, my parents both being passionate conservatives. My eldest brother and I are passionate liberals, which always makes for interesting discussions round the table. My other brother and sister (I believe) sit somewhere in the middle. But what makes us who we are? Nature vs Nurture and all that.

By the way, if you look up Jessica Mitford on Wikipedia, just be prepared for her photo. She looks like Satan's love child. But I promise you, she's not. I'll have more about her soon to prove it.