Financial Times reviews Troublemaker
December 05, 2025
The Financial Times (FT) has reviewed Troublemaker, writing, “Carla Kaplan captures the subversiveness and strength of the woman who rejected fascism and overcame personal tragedy.”
Courage of a steely, smiling and peculiarly English kind was a quality the six Mitford sisters possessed in spades. And none of that intrepid blue-blooded band — as Carla Kaplan’s new biography demonstrates with Mitfordian gusto — was pluckier than Jessica, the witty, subversive fifth sister who prided herself on being crowned in 1970 as “Queen of the Muckrakers.”
Jessica, as Kaplan states in Troublemaker, her well-researched and unashamedly partisan account, was a brilliant investigative journalist who also had “a predilection for silliness and a gift for making politics fun.” But still, did we need yet another book to add to the towering pile of Mitfordiana? This summer brought another jaunt through crushingly familiar territory with the television series Outrageous.
The answer seems to be yes; our appetite remains unquenched. Why? Perhaps because the Mitfords, more than any other English family, represent an addictive blend of high-spirited eccentricity with extremist politics that ranged from three bewitched Hitlerites (Unity Mitford, Diana Mosley and their gruffly unmaternal mother, Sydney) to an apolitical wannabe duchess — Debo, who became one — and leftwing Decca, as Jessica was always known.