Carla Kaplan and Mimi Pond

Writer and academic Professor Carla Kaplan and cartoonist, illustrator and writer Mimi Pond discuss the enduring fascination of the Mitfords including that of one of the lesser-known sisters, Jessica, who was the most radical and least understood of the family.

Kaplan is Davis Distinguished Professor of American Literature at Northeastern University and author of bestselling books including Miss Anne in Harlem and Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters. In Troublemaker: The Fierce, Unruly Life of Jessica Mitford, Kaplan explains how Jessica rejected a life of privilege to fight fascism, take part in civil rights marches and expose hypocrisy with a fearless wit. Her fight for justice encompassed the Spanish Civil War, the Communist Party USA, social reporting and relentless antics. Kaplan says Jessica’s irreverent anti-authoritarianism deeply influenced American culture and shamed those of her class in Britain caught on the wrong side of history.

Pond has created comics for newspapers and national magazines in the US and has written for television, including episodes of The Simpsons. In Do Admit: The Mitford Sisters and Me, she expresses her lifetime fascination with the society glitz, pageantry and scandal brought by the sisters. Pond brings to life the biographies of the sisters in a graphic form that records how they rubbed shoulders with some of the century’s most famous fascists and communists and set out on passionate adventures.

Part of the festival’s programme of American literature and culture.