Decca RIP

Finished the Jessica Mitford letters last night. Peter Sussman did a really masterful job editing them – they're paced like a novel. In her various memoirs, Mitford leaves out the really painful stuff – early death of beloved first husband, death of two children. They're all in the Letters though. Over the years, Mitford develops into an amiable battleaxe – quirky, bitchy, funny, brimming with the most delicious, subversive literary and political gossip. Her death catches her unaware – the reader too. She's such a vivid presence in her own unfiltered words; you actually find yourself missing her when you turn the last page.