Decca : The Letters of Jessica Mitford

Decca Mitford lived a larger-than-life life: born into the British aristocracyone of the famous (and sometimes infamous) Mitford sistersshe ran away to Spain during the Spanish Civil War with her cousin Esmond Romilly, Winston Churchills nephew, then came to America, became a tireless political activist and a member of the Communist Party, and embarked on a brilliant career as a memoirist and muckraking journalist (her funeral-industry expos, The American Way of Death, became an instant classic). She was a celebrated wit, a charmer, and throughout her life a prolific and passionate writer of lettersnow gathered here.

Deccas correspondence crackles with irreverent humor and mischief, and with acute insight into human behavior (and misbehavior) that attests to her generous experience of the worlds of politics, the arts, journalism, publishing, and high and low society. Here is correspondence with everyone from Katharine Graham and George Jackson, Betty Friedan, Miss Manners, Julie Andrews, Maya Angelou, Harry Truman, and Hillary Rodham Clinton to Deccas sisters the Duchess of Devonshire and the novelist Nancy Mitford, her parents, her husbands, her children, and her grandchildren.

In a profile of J.K. Rowling, The Daily Telegraph (UK), said, Her favorite drink is gin and tonic, her least favorite food, trip. Her heroine is Jessica Mitford.