(There was a brother, too, Thomas, but we need not concern ourselves with him. When we talk about the Mitfords, we are principally interested in the six sisters who came of age on their parents’ country estate between the two world wars: Nancy, Pamela, Diana, Unity, Jessica, and Deborah. Their scandalous escapades seemed to function as the reality TV drama of their era, even as they made real political and artistic contributions to the world. There are Mitford documentaries, Mitford biographies, even a Mitford musical. The Mitfords were a family of very minor English aristocrats who nonetheless became the center of the so-called Mitford industry in England from the 1930s on. And who exemplifies that situation better than the Mitfords? The world is fundamentally reorganizing itself before our eyes, and in such a destabilizing moment, there is something useful in looking at a family who found its world, too, shifting and changing in ways none of them could have predicted. Once-in-a-lifetime natural disasters are becoming once-a-decade disasters in the wake of catastrophic climate change. The past decade of political polarization shows no sign of abating, and it continues to turn not just countries but families against each other. There’s something about the Mitford family - that famous family of Nazis and communists, satirists and journalists who became the fascination of English society in the mid-20th century - that feels perfect for this moment.
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