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"Decca” Mitford lived a larger-than-life life: born into the British aristocracy— one of the famous (and sometimes infamous) Mitford sisters—she ran away to Spain during the Spanish Civil War with her cousin Esmond Romilly, Winston Churchill’s nephew, then came to America, became a tireless political activist and a member of the Communist Party, and embarked on a brilliant career as memoirist and muckraking journalist (her funeral industry |
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an acute insight into human behavior (and misbehavior) that attests to her generous experience of the worlds of politics, the arts, journalism, publishing, and high and low society. Here is correspondence with everyone from Katharine Graham and George Jackson, Betty Friedan, Miss Manners, Julie And rews, Maya Angelou, Harry Truman, and Hillary Rodham (before she was Clinton) to Decca’s sisters the Duchess of Devonshire and the novelist Nancy |
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exposé, The American Way of Death, became an instant classic). She was a celebrated wit, a charmer, and throughout her life a prolific and passionate writer of letters—now gathered here. Decca’s correspondence crackles with irreverent humor and mischief, and with |
Mitford, her parents, her
husbands, her children, and her grandchildren.
A luminous portrait of an inimitable
woman and her remarkable world.
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