It's nicely paced, buoyed by Decca' charming voice. She has a way of seeing the very best in the most misguided of people, all the while knowing just how misguided they are. We can chalk it up to experience. She grew up surrounded by some particularly misguided characters.
For me, anyhow, downfall of Hons and Rebels is its familiarity. Decca is fifth of the six Mitford Sisters, the daughters of a lesser English aristrocrat. They came of age during the 1920s and 1930s. They were beauties. They were wits. They were muses and writers in their own right. They were prolific correspondents. They were media darlings.
Having read Nancy's novels—I quite adored The Pursuit of Love
— which drew heavily on her own childhood, a few biographies
and collected correspondence there weren't many revelations in Hons and Rebels. It had been pretty efficiently mined already. Stray observations
Among the Mitford girls there were—by date of birth— a socialist (Nancy), a lesbian(Pamela), a fascist (Diana), a Nazi (Unity), a communist (Jessica) and a duchess (Deborah). Deborah was the white sheep in the family. Unity and Decca, the most opposed politically, were also the closest of the sisters.
I keep going back to them for the fantastic things they have to say about England between the wars.
Decca remembered everyday people in London saying "At least there's peace" after Munich. Ah, hindsight.
