Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #143 in Books
• Published on: 2008-05-05
• Binding: Paperback
• 830 pages

Guardian
`The Mitfords are...competitively exasperating...but slowly, cumulatively, as age and death are stared gallantly in the eye, I ended in tears.'

Times, Pick of the Week
`The letters are all compulsively readable...funny, sharp and stylish...they could have just pinged into your inbox.'

Telegraph
'Bright, intimate and moving correspondence.'

Customer Reviews

Fascinating and very enjoyable read
I knew nothing about the Mitfords before borrowing this book from my mum. I found it highly compelling, especially all the references to the many influential and varied people of the 20th century. It is also very sad at times, especially the harsh realities of the passage of time. This collection of letters has been carefully chosen to tell the reader the Mitfords' story but in the words of the girls themselves.

A big adventure from start to finish!!
This book is a truly wonderful read and I would totally recommend it. I didn't know much about the Mitfords before I read the book, but afterwards I was desperate to find out everything I could!

It takes a while to get to grips with who is who - but before long you are sucked into the world of the 'Hons and Rebels' and you don't want to leave!!

Its a rollercoaster of emotions from start to finish, and the fact that it is real life is the icing on the cake.

A truly mixed bag
This is a difficult book to review. The editing is very well done. The layout it clear and the letters' contents are usually well annotated (though I wish this had been more continuous - should the reader be expected to remember that "Edwina" on page x is the same as that on page y, who is annotated on page z?)

The contents, though, are another matter. Despite some snippets of very interesting material, for example Unity's accounts of her meetings with Adolf Hitler, rather too many of the letters rarely rise above the mundane, superficial and vacuous. How interesting can it be, just reading that long-dead famous person dined with other long-dead famous person, page after page? Nancy's letters are a case in point. She clearly wrote far better prose than her sisters, but the level rarely rose above an obsession with her wardrobe and the weather.

This is, of course a function of the fact that these women were a product of their class and their age, and I have little interest in, or time for, any of them personally except Jessica, who actually made the effort to cut herself of from the shallowness and to work to actually make a difference. Too much of the time of the others was taken up by bemoaning their lot (only two servants, three houses etc.) or by listing their famous friends.

Only as late middle age drew upon the women did their letters (and punctuation!) improve. This is clearly an important source of material and needed to be put into the public domain, but for long stretches it is also truly disappointing.