The Mitfords (In person)
There was the communist one, the fascist one and the quiet one, the novelist, the duchess, the Hitler obsessive and the mother who presided over them all. The Mitfords were the Kardashians of their day but with extreme politics and a world war thrown into the mix. Who were they? How did they end up at such polar ends of the political spectrum? What became of them? And why is it that we just can’t get enough of them, even almost a century since their heyday? In the last year, a TV show, a play, a graphic novel, multiple podcasts and various biographies have delved into this complicated, compelling, glamorous family of rebels, firebrands and Bright Young Things and now, the London Library, of which Nancy and Diana (while in Holloway Prison) were both members, is jumping on the bandwagon, bringing together some of the authors of the aforementioned works and tackling some of those enduring questions.
US author Carla Kaplan will join us to discuss Troublemaker, her new biography of Jessica Mitford, the communist one, whose ‘fierce, unruly life’ appalled the rest of the family. Rachel Trethewey discusses her new book, Muv, a biography of Sydney Mitford, mother of the clan and just as divisive as her daughters were. And playwright Amy Rosenthal talks about her recent play The Party Girls, about all six of the sisters as they take their disparate paths through life in extraordinary times. In conversation with fellow biographer of troublemaking women, Rachel Holmes, they discuss their own ways into this fascinating family and what, if anything, we can take from their story in our own troubled, polarised times.
Carla Kaplan is an award-winning writer, the Davis Distinguished Professor of American Literature at Northeastern University and a Guggenheim and ‘Public Scholar’ Fellow. She is the author of the New York Times Notable Books Miss Anne in Harlem and Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters, among others.
Amy Rosenthal is an acclaimed playwright whose work has been performed internationally. Her stage plays include The Party Girls, On The Rocks (nominated for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize), Henna Night and Sitting Pretty. Amy has written and adapted plays for BBC Radio Four and has a screenplay in development with Atlas Films. She is currently under commission to Manhattan Theatre Club.
Rachel Trethewey read History at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, where she won the Philip Geddes Prize for student journalism. During her journalistic career she wrote features for the Daily Mail and Daily Express, and subsequently reviewed history books for The Independent. She is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and received the Antonia Fraser Grant from the Society of Authors for her previous book Mothers of the Mind (2023).
Rachel Holmes is the author of four biographies: The Secret Life of James Barry, The Hottentot Venus, Eleanor Marx: A Life and Sylvia Pankhurst: Natural Born Rebel. She has edited collections of political writing, published as a journalist and worked as an academic, activist and literary programmer. She is an ambassador of The London Library.
Books by all the speakers will be available to buy at the event and online from our partner bookshop Hatchards.
This event will take place in person at The London Library. Doors (and the bar) will open at 6.30pm for a 7pm start. Please see our Event Access Guidelines before you arrive.
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