In case you aren't convinced

… that Jessica (Decca) Mitford was the best of the lot: she started a Running-Away fund from an early age, and used it to go to Spain with Esmond Romilly, Churchill's nephew. She had Leadbelly to stay, as well as many of the Black Panthers. She tried to give her share of an inherited island to the Communist Party (largely, I suspect, to annoy her sisters). J K Rowling named her daughter after Jessica - a great role model.

Those wonderful Mitford gels

Right now I'm reading Mary Lovell's The Mitford Girls and not enjoying it much. I've an interest in the Mitfords - Jessica (Decca) is a hero of mine, and the rest of the brood are an object lesson in the iniquities of the aristocracy. Unfortunately, Lovell's book is essentially a long paean of praise to poor misunderstood Diana (unrepentant Fascist, friend of Goebbels, wife of Mosley etc), an elegy for Unity (personal friend of Hitler etc. etc.) and an attempt to paint Decca as a liar and fantasist because she was a Communist (who lived most of her life in rough Oakland, California, fighting for the poor and black population). Lovell, it seems, divides the world between those who hunt (good) and those who don't (rotters).