Jessica Mitford was the fifth of the six Mitford daughters and always the rebel among her sisters - Nancy, Pam, Diana, Unity and Debo. At the age of nineteen she eloped to the Spanish Civil War with her cousin, Esmond Romilly, and the two of them moved to the USA in 1939. Esmond Romilly died in action in 1941 and Jessica later married Bob Treuhaft, a lawyer, with whom she lived in California. A one-time member of the American Communist Party, Jessica was a frequent target for the House Committee of Un-American Activities and was a passionate supporter of civil rights.

'Whenever I read the words "Peer's Daughter" in a headline,' Lady Redesdale once sadly remarked, 'I know it's going to be something about one of you children.' The Mitford family is one of the century's most enigmatic, made notorious by Nancy's novels, Diana's marriage to Sir Oswald Mosley, Unity's infatuation with Hitler, Debo's marriage to a duke and Jessica's passionate commitment to communism. Hons and Rebels is an enchanting and deeply absorbing memoir of an isolated and eccentric upbringing which conceals beneath its witty, light-hearted surface much wisdom and depth of feeling.