Romilly was a nephew (by marriage) of Winston Churchill. Marriages and family Life with Esmond Romilly Īt the age of 19, Mitford met her second cousin, Esmond Romilly, who was recuperating from dysentery caught during a stint with the International Brigades defending Madrid during the Spanish Civil War. Rear view of Asthall Manor, the Mitford family home in Oxfordshire. and don't forget there's a huge strain of anti-Semitism that runs through that class in England.' She was known as the ' red sheep' of the family. He had crushed the trade unions, he had crushed the Communist Party and he had crushed the Jews. Mitford said that her parents had 'appeased Hitler and Nazism. Jessica (known as 'Decca' to family and friends) later described her conservative father as 'one of nature's fascists', renounced her privileged background while still a teenager, and became an adherent of communism. Upon the outbreak of war between the UK and Nazi Germany, Unity tried to commit suicide in Munich, and Diana and her husband were interned in Britain without trial from May 1940 until November 1943. Diana married the British Union of Fascists' leader, Sir Oswald Mosley.

Her sisters Unity and Diana were well-known members of the British Union of Fascists and ultimately became close friends of Adolf Hitler, Unity becoming fanatically devoted to him. She had little formal education, but nevertheless did a great deal of reading. Her 1960 memoir Hons and Rebels and her 1963 book of social commentary The American Way of Death both became classics.īorn at Asthall Manor, Oxfordshire, the sixth of seven children, Jessica Mitford was the daughter of David Freeman-Mitford, 2nd Baron Redesdale, and his wife Sydney (daughter of politician and publisher Thomas Bowles), and grew up in a series of her father's country houses. Both refused to testify in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee. Jessica married her second cousin Esmond Romilly, who was killed in World War II, and then American civil rights lawyer Robert Treuhaft, with whom she joined the Communist Party USA and worked closely in the Civil Rights Congress.

Jessica Lucy ' Decca' Treuhaft (née Freeman-Mitford, later Romilly 11 September 1917 – 23 July 1996) was an English author, one of the six aristocratic Mitford sisters noted for their sharply conflicting politics. David Freeman-Mitford, 2nd Baron Redesdale

Hons and rebels by jessica mitford