Decca's Story, In Her Own Words

Jessica Mitford was the epitome of paradox. Daughter of a British Lord, she was brought up at a level of privilege few can imagine today. As a teenager she outrebelled everyone in her highly talented and eccentric family by becoming a dedicated Communist. She then ran away from home with her second cousin and fellow left winger, married him in the middle of the Spanish Civil War, and eventually wound up in the United States in the middle of World War II, widowed with a young daughter. She married again, this time to a leftwing California lawyer, and spent the remainder of her long life as a scourge of Fascism, Conservatism, and anything petty, mean, or small minded. Eventually she abandoned the Communist Party as ineffectual, and she is probably better known today for her muckraking exposes of abuses in everything from funerals to prisons to Elizabeth Arden salons and (ironically) for being a member of the fabulous Mitford family, sister to Nancy the novelist, Pam the farmer, Deborah the Duchess, and Diana and Unity the unrepentant Nazis.