The piece surveys the Mitford family with a focus on Decca (Jessica Mitford) and how her radical life contrasted with her sisters’ divergent paths, showing the pull between aristocratic privilege and social activism.

Her journey includes a Spain-bound elopement with Esmond Romilly, his wartime service and presumed death, her work at the Office of Price Administration, and her later marriage to Treuhaft, which deepened her political commitments.

Her investigative journalism, notably The American Way of Death (1963), earned her the title of “Queen of Muckrakers” and helped spur reform in the funeral industry while exposing social injustices.

Decca’s political awakening began in childhood through socialist literature and a rebellious stance toward conservative parents, leading to self-directed education, emigration to the U.S., and a career in muckraking journalism and activism.

Kaplan’s biography portrays Decca as a product of aristocratic privilege and a fearless advocate for the powerless, using wit and meticulous research to challenge power while staying loyal to truth.

Decca grew up in a privileged Swinbrook upbringing, forming tight bonds with her sisters and creating a distinct Mitford humor and language, the so‑called ‘Mitford tease.’

Toward the end of her life, Decca remained emotionally connected to her sisters but faced recurring family tensions, illustrating how loyalty and dissent were deeply entwined within the Mitford clan.

The narrative places Decca within the broader Mitford industry while arguing that her individual contributions as a committed leftist writer stand apart from her sisters’ controversial choices.

The Mitford sisters pursued radically different lives: Nancy as a novelist and satirist; Diana married into wealth and gravitated toward fascism; Unity idolized Hitler; Decca pursued socialism, journalism, and civil rights, later joining the American Communist Party with her husband.