Jessica Mitford’s Handbag

Feb 4, 2026

Rosemary Hill, Contributing Editor at the London Review of Books and biographer, discusses Carla Kaplan’s portrait of Jessica Mitford — an aristocratic-born American communist. Short, vivid stories cover Mitford’s runaway impulse and Spain, her move to the US and civil-rights work, fraught family ties and betrayals, FBI scrutiny and McCarthyism, and her reinvention as an investigative writer.

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INSIGHT

Mitford Fame Was Born Of Privilege

The Mitford sisters were fearless, high-profile aristocrats who lived dramatically public lives.
Their aristocratic upbringing amplified ordinary enthusiasms into international headlines.

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ANECDOTE

A Childhood Running-Away Account

Jessica opened a 'Running Away Account' at Drummonds Bank as a child and longed to run away.
She and Esmond Romilly later literally ran off to fight in Spain after she asked him, 'would you take me?'

insights

INSIGHT

An American Lens Recasts Decca

Carla Kaplan's biography reframes Jessica as an American communist rooted in aristocratic English origins.
That perspective foregrounds her civil-rights activism and long American life rather than family gossip.

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Who were the Mitford sisters

01:07 • 3min

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Jessica Mitford's runaway impulse and childhood

04:20 • 2min

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What makes Kaplan's biography different

06:38 • 2min

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Why Jessica went to Spain

08:55 • 2min

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Child loss and early marriage trauma

11:17 • 2min

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Emigrating to America and adapting

Meeting Churchill and wartime conflicts

17:31 • 4min

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Romilly's death and remarriage to Truehaft

21:10 • 2min

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Family rifts and the scrapbook dispute

23:12 • 4min

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Jessica's complex bond with Unity

27:05 • 2min

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Surveillance, McCarthyism, and activism

29:21 • 3min

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Willie McGee case and troubling personal episode

32:00 • 3min

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Leaving the Communist Party after Hungary

35:30 • 1min

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Reinvention: journalism and exposés

36:55 • 6min

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Later life, family reconciliations and decline

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Hons and Rebels is a memoir that divides into two main parts. The first part details Jessica Mitford's upbringing at Swinbrook in the Cotswolds, highlighting her eccentric family, particularly her sisters Nancy, Diana, Unity, Pamela, and Debo. The narrative includes their unique nicknames and private languages, as well as Jessica's emerging political identity. The second part focuses on her romance with her cousin Esmond Romilly, their elopement to France and Spain, and their involvement in the Spanish Civil War. The book provides a vivid account of Mitford's rebellious spirit and her early life before she moved to the United States and became involved in civil rights and anti-capitalist activism.

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When Jessica Mitford (aka Decca) was eleven, in 1928, she opened a Running Away Account at Drummonds Bank. A few years later she ran away to Spain to help in the fight against Franco, and not long after that moved to the US where she became a naturalised citizen and joined the Communist Party.

The Mitford sisters wrote many books and even more have been written about them, but Carla Kaplan's scholarly new biography of Jessica is a welcome addition to the ‘Mitford industry’, according to Rosemary Hill, because she approaches her subject as an ‘American communist with an unusual background in the English aristocracy’.

In this episode, Rosemary joins Thomas Jones to talk about Decca’s eventful life, her work as a civil rights activist and writer, and her complicated relationships with the other Mitfords. When asked whether the bond with her sisters had ‘stood between her and life’s cruel circumstances’, Decca replied: ‘Sisters were life’s cruel circumstances.’

Find further reading on the episode page: https://lrb.me/mitfordpod

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