Do Admit: The Mitford Sisters and Me

by Mimi Pond

Mimi Pond crafts a gorgeous, dazzling biography of the Mitford Sisters

Born with pedigrees but without the pocketbooks to match, The Mitfords were certainly no strangers to lies, intrigue, or scandal. Nancy, Pamela, Diana, Unity, Jessica, and Deborah. All six sisters were weaned on their family’s well-documented upper class a ne’er do well would-be entrepreneur father; a stern, stiff-upper-lipped mother; a revolving door of governesses of varying propriety, all against the backdrop of a crumbling estate falling into disrepair.

The sisters grew from cloistered turn-of-the-century country girls into debutantes who would marry into political influence—for better or worse. Is it any wonder that a young, working class Mimi in Southern California becomes enamored with The Mitfords’ downright fanciful rich-and-famous lifestyle? This charming, inventively cartooned, and lovingly researched biography captures the dramatic, over-the-top antics of high society’s strongest personalities as they rubbed elbows with some of history’s most infamous fascists and communists.

Pond’s genius for classic cartooning in the vein of the Vanity Fair caricature and the satirical illustrations of Charles Addams brings the aesthetic decadence of the 1920s and ‘30s to life with effortless aplomb, warts and all.

Genres: Graphic Novels, Nonfiction, Biography, History, Comics, Memoir, Family

Kindle Edition

Published September 16, 2025

About the author

Mimi Pond is a cartoonist, illustrator, and writer. She has created comics for the Los Angeles Times, Seventeen magazine, National Lampoon, and many other publications. Television credits include writing the first full-length episode of The Simpsons, “Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire”, and episodes for the shows Designing Women and Pee Wee’s Playhouse. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, the painter Wayne White.

Reviews

[Paul Bryant · Rating 5 out of 5]

Let’s go on a wildly whirling whitewater plunge through the terrible traumas of the twentieth century in the preposterously posh company of the six enormously entertaining Mitford sisters. This is a brilliant cheeky chunky (it’s big) funny graphic biography of all of them. It might be my book of the year although there are some strong contenders. There is a cast of dozens and dozens. Six sisters, two parents, many spouses and cohabitees, children, and various Famous People swirl through the pages as the sisters ricochet around the world from the 1920s to the 1980s. They rarely slow down.

There are walk-on parts for Hitler! Winston Churchill! Lyndon Johnson! William Faulkner! John F Kennedy! Nancy sings “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer”!

Mimi Pond knows a great quote when she sees one :

Winston Churchill, a man who looked like every baby ever, once described Charles de Gaulle as “a female llama, surprised in her bath”



SOME MITFORD SISTERS

The Fascists :

Diana married a guy named Oswald Moseley who was head of the British Union of Fascists in the 1930s – yes, they were never very popular. They were married in a private ceremony at the house of JOSEPH GOEBBELS. And Adolf himself was one of the guests . Back in Britain, when war was declared they were put into preventative detention as enemy sympathisers. Because they were being held without trial they could wear their own clothes. This led to a situation in 1940 whereby Diana is wearing a luxurious fur coat looking out of her prison bars while being bombed by her friends the Nazis. Mimi Pond comments : “That’s the kind of irony money can’t buy”.



Unity developed an obsession about Hitler too. She went to Germany in the 30s and wheedled her way into Hitler’s inner circle. Eventually he became a bit smitten too – she was six feet tall, blond, you know, extremely Aryan – but also, she would tell him all the gossip other people were scared to tell him. She told anyone who would listen that if war broke out between Britain and Germany she would shoot herself. When it did, she went to a park and shot herself. She didn’t die but she wasn’t quite herself after that, not with a bullet lodged in her brain.

The Communist :

Jessica : decided to live in the USA where she got involved with every left-wing cause going and therefore found herself before the HUAC. In 1963 she wrote The American Way of Death which was a big bombshell and turned the funeral industry upside down. (I must read that one.) She was a live wire campaigning journalist.



The Author :

Nancy : she wrote The Pursuit of Love in 1945 which is hilarious – a must read! And she wrote loads more and was a big bestseller. She’s the one you’ve heard of.

The Duchess :

Deborah : she married the second son of a Duke – he wasn’t going to inherit anything but then his older brother died and his father died and he was Duke of Devonshire. Deborah found herself in charge of Chatsworth House with its numberless rooms (over 200) and six or so other stately piles dotted around England. Chatsworth was in a neglected, parlous state at the time and she resurrected the whole thing, restored everything to pristine Jane Austen-style perfection. In 2010 at the age of 90 she published the first of three memoirs. She was the last one to die, in 2014.

All of this is just to mention a few bullet points.

So for all readers who love cracking good biographies in graphic form, this is a must read.

[Tatiana · Rating 3 out of 5]

A chaotic, disorganized book about chaotic family, where EVERY MEMBER was drawn to extremes. An interesting bunch of characters, but I wish I learned about them via a better medium.

[Alli Cadle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I could have read a hundred more unnumbered prussian blue pages. Obsession is the heart of the book—Pond’s obsession with the Mitfords and the sisters’ own deep and disparate obsessions ranging from chickens to Hitler. They were fascinating, complicated, well-connected people who participated in history and in their own mythmaking. And the nicknames!

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm dead center in the middle of the hypothetical Venn diagram showing an overlap of people with an interest in the Mitford sisters and of adults who read graphic novels, so I had really high hopes for this book. I didn't like it as much as I expected, because I really struggled with the layout. Almost every page is an info-graphic (as opposed to a series of panels with a narrative), and each of these is cluttered with lines of text of different sizes placed at different angles, and I was constantly struggling to figure out what I should read first, where. The parts about the author's childhood also didn't seem to fit in, but that's a lesser complaint. Despite all this, the Mitford fascination still worked its strange spell, just not as much as I'd hoped.

[Rod Brown · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Mitford sisters were a mash-up of the Kardashians and the Kennedys playing Real Housewives of England in their English and French manors with World War II and the Cold War playing out in the background.

Mimi Pond does her best to communicate her enthusiasm for the siblings by occasionally injecting her childhood self into the narrative, but I could find little reason to care about this group of aristocratic debutantes and socialites. Some of them became writers of books, but not books that I've ever really heard of. And a scary percentage of them were pro-fascist worshippers of Hitler, so, you know, fuck them.

This book gets off to a shaky start as Pond seems to assume the reader will have familiarity with the family and fails to firmly establish their (in)significance before dumping us into their lives and jumping around in a scattershot fashion between the sisters and their confusing collection of nicknames. It doesn't help that the reading order of the captions gets a little murky a few too many times without borders to section the panels off from one another.

About the time I was settling into the groove of the book's style, I was also realizing just how unimportant these women were in the larger scheme of things despite Pond's protestations to the contrary.

The real drawback for me in the end though is that this is a thick monster that took forever to slog through at 30 to 60 minutes a day over the course of a week. I have nothing but regret for the time lost to what is essentially an overlong gossip column.


(Best of 2025 Project: I'm reading all the graphic novels that made it onto one or more of these lists:

• Washington Post 10 Best Graphic Novels of 2025
• Publishers Weekly 2025 Graphic Novel Critics Poll
• NPR's Books We Love 2025: Favorite Comics and Graphic Novels

This book made the WaPo and PW lists.)

[Elizabeth A · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderfully illustrated graphic biography interspersed with memoir tidbits.

I'm new to the Mitford family and these sisters are rather astounding. I learned a lot and plan on reading more about these women.

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve read a few graphic novels but I think this one is my all time favourite.
There is so much to write about the six Mitford sisters and they are all so different yet fascinating so a graphic novel is a great way to find out about it all as a normal book would be a very weighty tome!
Beautifully illustrated as well and the summaries comparing each sister make it really easy to follow and understand.

[Paula · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit confusing with all the names and nicknames and sometimes it's not clear where to read the text but overall very interesting story. I think watching the series may clarify who is who.

[Yara El-Soueidi · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE MITFORD SISTERS WERE WILD AND DECCA WAS THE BEST OF THEM ALL.

[Maria Almaguer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh, those wild Mitford girls! I've read several collective biographies and collections of letters about these six extremely colorful English women who lived in the early to mid twentieth century: Nancy, Pamela, Diana, Unity, Jessica, and Deborah--they also had one lone brother, but he's not the subject here. The author explores, in aptly whimsical and dramatic graphics, their escapades as well as their relationships with each other and their parents, their experiences and connections (with Adolf Hitler and fascism, communism, civil rights, racism to name but a few), and their influence in the world (in literature, politics, and popular culture). Pond also writes of their effect on her young life in the 1960s and 1970s in California. It's a treat--do admit!

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mimi Pond has created a masterpiece! A fabulous group portrait of the Mitford Sisters, and a memoir of her nearly-lifelong fascination with them, absolutely gorgeous to look at, and brilliant to read. This is no easy task, given that (A) there's a lot of ground to cover with this group; and (B) the Mitford industry has been going strong for a long time, so one might feel that this ground has been covered. And yet, Mimi Pond has done the impossible, and given us a compelling new look at the whole saga.
Highly recommended!

[Rachel Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

So much fun! A delightfully unusual graphic novel/comic about my favorite pack of eccentric British sisters.

[Shawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing. Masterful.

[milo in the woods · Rating 4 out of 5]

this is such a unique book. it's a graphic novel history of the mitford sisters, interspersed with relevant biographical details of the authors life, and the ways in which she relates to them.

as a well-read and british young woman, i have a complicated relationship with the mitfords. they kind of epitomise the sisterly bond that i have never gotten to experience. in british media, their self-mythologising has worked; they're borderline folkloric figures and whilst not everyone knows exactly who they are, you'd be hard-pressed to find someone completely ignorant of their impact on society.

diana may have been villainised (rightfully so) in the 1940's and 50's for her fascist sympathies, but she's still often remembered as 'the beautiful one'. british media often villainises nancy for turning her into the police (making comments about the jealousy she must have held towards her sister, for being young and fertile), and memorialises diana for her beauty and aristocracy. not only was diana a fascist, she also seems to have been a bully. i digress, the point is that these women were wonderfully complex and mimi pond seems to get that in ways that other biographers and commentators haven't.

unity was a nazi, obsessed with hitler, but she was also a seriously unwell, vulnerable young woman. these two truths can co-exist. all of these women were complex and multi-faceted and hard to define, or categorise. despite all their differences and disagreements and snide comments, they seem to have shared a bond that i can never quite get a read on. it's fascinating, simply put, and this graphic novel did a really good job of helpung me articulate my thoughts and consider the mitford sisters in depth.

i adored the artwork in this graphic novel! it is of a style that i really enjoyed looking at, and some of the ways in which the text is integrated into the drawings are super unusual and fascinating to look at. sometimes pages took a little longer to decipher because it wasn't always clear to me what order i ought to be reading in, but that wasn't much trouble. and my reading experience was so enhanced by the illustrations, and the use of silhouette's and imagery.

i also wanted to note that i liked the way this author wrote about grief. the mitford sisters' lives were complex, and people they cared about died tragically. this was written about in a sensitive and appropriate manner in my opinion, and some of the illustrations related to grief were very moving.

[Nile]

A few baffling mistakes not picked up by the author or publisher:

1) The Sudetenland was not previously part of Germany, stripped of it at Versailles. It was part of Austria-Hungary. The point is that this was the point Hitler had stepped past acts like entering the Rhineland et al, winding down Versailles, and actively threatened war. That is why it was appeasement as opposed to 'hey well maybe we were too harsh in the first place and is it really all that bad'.

2) The Soviets did not kill 300,000 people in Hungary during the Uprising, a figure so ludicrous it would have made any occupation impossible. The most liberal estimates put the deaths at 1% of this, 3,000.

Both of these points have little to do with the women but should absolutely have been picked up by anyone casting a diligent eye over the book.

The book itself is a fun enough read.

[Kara · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating look at the Mitford sisters, showing their background, what they individually and together, who influenced them and how they influenced others. They are a great example of how to show the personal, on the ground version of big events of the mid-20th century when so often that history is only looked on at a macro level. I wasn't thrilled with the illustration style that often made it hard to read, especially when so much information was crammed onto each page, but the content itself was so interesting, and you can see why Nancy was inspired to put her crazy family down on paper.

[Alley McGlynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Holy moly, the fact that Mimi Pond illustrated this entire CHONKER of a graphic novel, in the most beautiful way, I can’t help but give it five stars! It would take me a weekend to do just ONE of the hundreds of pages she’s done, so basically, I now worship her. I had no idea that the Mitford sisters were so notorious! I’ve read Nancy Mitford’s well-known novels and enjoyed them, but wasn’t aware that they were semi-autobiographical about her eccentric family. I always love reading about the different roles of women and families during WWII, so the timeframe was also right up my alley.

[Kirsten · Rating 4 out of 5]

I recently watched a tv mini-series about this uproarious family of six sisters and one brother born into a lower (at least less wealthy) rung of British aristocracy. I was instantly drawn into this wildly creative, sometimes wrenching, often laugh out loud funny graphic novel. It helped to know a little something about them ahead of reading it. Six very strong minded and iron willed women.

[Renaud Houde · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow mais qu'elle travaille ce livre, les différents styles de narrations et dessins explorés sont incroyables. Une histoire énorme, complexe et avec tellement de liens fous que l'autrice arrive à très bien raconter.

[Penelope Holland · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a cool book! My dad got it for me for Christmas after watching the new Mitford show Outrageous (also so good). It’s such a fascinating story and Pond told it in such a fun, creative way with beautiful illustrations. Highly recommend!

[Andrea · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is visually beautiful, and I suppose it's because I'm getting old and cranky that I want to complain about the font jumping around from tiny to huge and the text being at an angle making it harder to read and being unclear about whether I should read the panels going across or going down. I adore Nancy Mitford's novels and I should probably go ahead and read Daughters and Rebels, but I haven't yet. I learned a fair amount about the Mitford family, but the narrative does jump around in time quite a lot and at the end I found I can't remember which of the Mitford sisters ended up having a relationship with a lesbian in Switzerland (I think) and I feel like I would have to go through the whole thing again to figure it out and it's already overdue at the library, so, no, I won't be doing that. I wish the author had put more about herself and her responses to the Mitford sisters' lives in this, for example, how and when did she discover them? What was that journey like? How obsessed is she and what nutty obsessive things does she do besides put them in a graphic novel? I might read another by this author and I might not.

[Shelby Monita · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up because Brit Box refuses to renew Outrageous for a season 2 and I had to know more about this family. Me and my siblings are very different people much like the Mitfords. Which I guess means you don’t learn much about someone from knowing their family.

If I can take one thing away from this book, it’s that you can be many different things in one lifetime. *unless you are Diana.

[Sam Quixote · Rating 4 out of 5]

Do Admit! (a favourite saying of the sisters) is cartoonist Mimi Pond’s comics biography of the Mitford sisters - Nancy, Unity, Pam, Jessica, Diana, and Deborah - as well as a mini-autobiography of her own, at least in terms of her lifelong fascination with the Mitford family. At nearly 500 pages, the book covers all of the significant parts of the sisters’ lives and puts them in the context of some of the 20th century’s major historical events.

It’s an entertaining and informative look at this intriguing family, with Pond’s enthusiasm for these real life characters rubbing off on the reader. Prior to this, I had only known of Nancy Mitford, the author of novels like The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate (and something vaguely fascist/Hitler-adjacent about one or two of the other sisters). So it’s surprising to learn that nearly all of the sisters were authors, despite their mother’s lack of support in educating them. Although Nancy was the only novelist, Decca (Jessica’s nickname - this family and their nicknames, honestly), Debo (Deborah), and Diana all published nonfiction.

Besides Nancy the novelist, who were the Mitford sisters? Unity was six feet tall and friends with Hitler - she would also be the first to die, quite young and entirely her fault. Diana was the other Nazi sympathiser, and wife to Oswald Mosley, the leader of British fascism. Jessica/Decca was a communist who emigrated to America early in life and never returned to Britain, later becoming a civil rights crusader. Deborah/Debo became a duchess and steward to many historical country houses (all open to the public today under the National Trust). Pam was the quiet one - a farmer, who raised Diana’s children while she was imprisoned during the war, who later in life came out to be bisexual.

Although the subtitle is “The Mitford Sisters and Me”, Pond doesn’t include much of herself in the book, with the focus being almost exclusively on the Mitford Sisters, and then, mostly on Nancy, Decca and Diana. Although this is mostly because Pam was a very private person and so there isn’t much to say about her; the same could be said of Debo, whose conservation work pretty much defined her life; and Unity died young.

The Mitfords were aristocracy but it’s crazy how involved in some of the biggest names in 20th century history they were. Early in life, Decca (the communist) runs off with Esmond Romilly, Winston Churchill’s nephew, to fight the fascists in Spain, which explains why a naval Destroyer was sent to pick them up and bring them home! Both Diana and Unity insinuate themselves into Hitler’s inner circle, with Diana marrying Oswald in Goebbels’ house with Hitler as wedding guest. Their family is even vaguely connected to the Kennedys (and Debo may have hooked up with JFK once), while Nancy was friends with the literati of her day, exchanging regular correspondence with Evelyn Waugh, as well as dating the French ambassador, Gaston Palewski, who was part of DeGaulle’s government.

It’s like reading a biography of a real life Royal Tenenbaums - the family was a rich collection of eccentric characters who lived extraordinary lives. I’m not sure why Pond chose to colour the book in Prussian Blue ink but it works - the book looks great. And I especially appreciated the creative way she put across the Mitfords’ stories on each page. It’s not a series of uniform panels, but one creative design layout after another, that adds to keeping the reader’s attention on the book - and for such a big book, it’s a very quick read because Pond is such a strong storyteller.

The book does lose a bit of steam in the post-war years. Family members start dying off, the sisters are set in their lives, and the narrative becomes the sisters doing what they’ve been doing until they no longer do. And there’s perhaps too much on well-known American history than needed to be in there, as Decca (the American sister) dominates the remaining story with her social justice crusading. Also, as pretty as cursive is, it’s an absolute bugger to read and I hated the pages filled with cursive (not that many, but still).

Overall though, I do admit that this is a brilliant, informative and enthralling read about some genuinely captivating people and their remarkable lives, presented beautifully by the very talented Mimi Pond. Even if you’re not interested in learning about the Mitfords, the book makes you take an interest in them and cheerfully whisks you up into their upper class lives - for the better! Do Admit! The Mitford Sisters and Me is definitely one of the best comics of 2025 and a grand one-stop shop for learning about this complicated but undeniably compelling family.

[Kirk · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book so much that I wanted to give it 5 stars. Well drawn, funny, and the author is sympathetic to all the sisters except Diana. (I think she could have been more sympathetic to Diana *before* she became a fascist, but she's right to be mostly negative thereafter.)

Her attack on biographers who scold Nancy for helping get her sister, Diana Moseley, interned under Defence Regulation 18B is brilliant:

"COME ON. THIS WAS WAR! No, literally. THE BATTLE OF DUNKIRK was being waged at the very same time."

(She could have added that MI-5 already knew what Nancy asked them to investigate. They'd been stalking Diana and compiling a dossier since 1934. The decisive factor in locking her up was Col. Guinness's personal intervention. Life lesson: Try to avoid turning your ex-spouse's rich and powerful father into a relentless enemy.)

This is also the first biography I've read that spells out the Moseleys' post-war plan for Europe. The others, following Diana's autohagiography, just say they wanted the UK and Europe to unite, leaving you to imagine that they wanted something like the European Union. The author highlights key details of Oswald Moseley's plan: exclude southern Europe, expel the rest of the Jews (and black immigrants to the UK), and combine the remaining British, French, and Belgian colonial empires into a single empire that included all of Africa. (How "all of Africa" without Spain, Portugal, and their colonies? Who knows?)

However, the author makes 3 spectacular blunders.

First, she describes the Communist Party in the 1930s and '40s as crusading liberals who supported the New Deal, unions, civil rights, and FDR's foreign policy. (Why bring in the 1930s at all? The CP spent the first 3 years of the New Deal denouncing it as "Social Fascist." During the Hitler-Stalin Pact, they stridently opposed FDR's foreign policy, recycling right-wing isolationist talking points. Anyway, none of that is relevant to the period when Jessica was a member.)

By the time Jessica joined the CP in 1943, the CP *looked like* energetic liberals if you saw only their support for the war and their rhetoric about Communism being "20th Century Americanism." To do that, though, you had to ignore their stated but less-trumpeted goal of making 20th century America a one-party totalitarian dictatorship with a completely government owned, centrally planned economy like the Soviet Union, no organizations independent of the Party, no lawyers except prosecutos, and informers everywhere. Details, details.

Unlike Diana, Oswald, and the Nazis, Jessica and Bob weren't leaders or closely associated with leaders, either in the CP or the USSR. They've never been suspected of espionage or recruiting for Soviet intelligence. Like most rank and file party members and even top-level non-Communist New Dealers, they believed Soviet propaganda about life in the USSR. They were slow to discover that construction according to the party program's blueprint required executions, internment in forced labor camps in the Arctic and Kazakhstan, and starvation on a massive scale. Once they saw Communism up close, they left the party within 2 years. As far as I can tell, they didn't have authoritarian personalities. All the good work they did as members, they could have done and later did better and more contentedly as non-members.

Second, she mentions Khrushchev's secret speech at the CPSU 20th Party Congress, denouncing Stalin's crimes. Just 1 page, no details, no hint of what those crimes were. Absent details, "crimes" could refer to embezzlement and reckless driving, not killing 10–20 million people, including over 650,000 Communists in 6 months during the Great Terror. The contrast with her detailed page on the Blitz is striking.

Third, in explaining why Jessica and Bob left the CP, she says that 300,000 people were killed during and following the Hungarian Uprising in 1957. They had recently visited Hungary. According to *all* sources, the number was closer to 3,000. 300,000 is half again as many as the 200,000 Hungarians who fled the country. This is the opposite of the book's tendency to beautify Communism, so I have to chalk that 300,000 figure up to an AI hallucination.

These mistakes are a small part—3 pages of an otherwise wonderful 445-page book—so I still give it 4 stars. I read the Kindle edition, but plan to read a hard copy from the library so I can appreciate the drawings.

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Sisters, sisters, There were never such devoted sisters"--White Christmas

Yet another huge and impressive brick of a book in the graphic novel universe, that has made many “best of 2025” lists that I thank Rod Brown for sharing, which he predictably (and entertainingly) loathed, and I (not surprisingly) liked a lot. Do Admit: The Mitford Sisters and Me (2025) by Mimi Pond is the third brick I have loved by Ponds, Over Easy and The Customer is Always Wrong, two books about her waitressing at some restaurant in the SF bay area. Why read two books about a restaurant?! Easy: Ponds is hilarious and a terrifically talented cartoonist.

Do Admit (which is a phrase the Mitford girls say) is also entertaining, in a kind of continuous train wreck kinda way--many of the people in this rich Brit Mit family are despicable, but it is to her credit that she makes of them a generally “affectionate” satire, as Ponds’ favorite (and the most famous, maybe?) Mitford sister, Nancy, also did in writing semi-autobiographical novels about her family.

The Mitford family was well known for various reasons in the twentieth century, and Ponds writes her own interest into the tale, why a working class girl might be fascinated (as many of us still are about Hollywood and rock music rich ‘n’ famous figures) with a rich Brit fam..Nancy Mitford was the best known, the author of several well known comic sendups of her fellow rich Brits; Jessica was a Communist or what might today be called in the US a democratic socialist, having worked against Franco and spoken up against the House Un-American Committee and written the send-up of the funeral industry, The American Way of Death, which I must have read into if not finished at one time.

Unity and Diana were straight-up fascists, friends with Hitler himself and during the war, never apologetic about it even after the war! Despicable.. . . but you know, page turner to read about the vile sometimes.

The two less interesting: Deborah, the youngest, actually came into wealth after Daddy Deaarest lost most of their fortune. Daddy was a racist, colonialist asshole. Dad and Mom divorced over ideological differences. Pamela, who lived the longest, but what else?

This book is really impressive, well-researched, longer than it had to be at 500 pages, though I read it all pretty quickly, I’m in her age range of people who might like to get into what might now be an obscure topic. She is as witty as many of the Mitfords about it all, but also doesn’t ignore the fascism and other jaw-dropping things. I think it deserves to be on the best of the year lists, Rod--the art is terrific, more illustrated book than comics, actually, with all the information in it; took her six years to do it, but as with any book, she manages to make the sisters interesting with all their letters and nicknames and politics and sex scandals (and oh, there was a brother, too!). Very deliciously dishy at some points.

Reminds me of Capote’s Women, the rich white women he befriended and then turned on to write a dishy book, who then turned on him. Eh. But then, it has its appeal, the roasting of the rich. And a bit like the Royal Tenenbaums. But also, relevant to our Present Moment, with Musk and the rest of the billionaire class of oligarchs and fascists that millions seem to adore or at least be fascinated with.

[Ron · Rating 4 out of 5]

So how much do you know of the Mitford Sisters? Did you know that one was a personal friend of Adolf Hitler while another was a Communist who had traveled to Spain to cover the Civil War? Or that several of the sisters became well-known authors in England and the United States? Mimi Pond invites the reader to come with her on a graphic exploration of these sisters whose lives intersected with so much of 20th Century history.

Mimi Pond sets the stage for the entrance of the sisters with a graphic summarization of each sister in chronological order - Nancy, Pamela, Diana, Unity, Jessica, and Deborah. She follows this with an interlude of how she became interested in these British ladies while growing up in in 1960-1970s southern California. During the rest of the book Mimi pops herself in briefly. Then it is back to 1920's England for the Mitford Sisters saga. Pond takes the time to highlight each sister and the interactions they had with each other and the larger world as they grew. Nancy became friends with a number of up and coming authors such as Brian Howard and Evelyn Waugh through her brother Tom and started mining her family for her writings. Pamela tended to hang out in the countryside. Diana married to get out of the house but then met up and flung herself upon Oswald Moseley who formed the British Union of Fascists. Unity met and befriended Adolf Hitler while traveling in Germany. She survived shooting herself in the head after Britain declared war on Germany in 1939. Jessica had set up a "running away" fund at a local bank at age 12. She used that fund to travel to Spain with radical journalist Esmond Romilly to cover the Spanish Civil War. The two married and moved to the United States. After Esmond's death as a member of the Royal Canadian Air Force, she married Bob Treuhaft, a civil right lawyer. She later wrote several muckraking books such as The American Way of Death. Deborah was know for her expressions, but her marriage to Andrew Cavendish paid off when she became the Duchess of Devonshire at the age of 40. The Cavendish's now had 5 country estates to care for and maintain with Chatsworth House being the most famous. All the sisters' tales are followed until they reach their end.

Mimi Pond takes what could be a boring topic but with her drawings, page design, and text keep the reader exploring the lives of these women and learning the impact they had on history that most readers likely did not know. This title provides an interesting picture into a family and a time fading into history that should be remembered!

Thanks Netgalley and Drawn & Quarterly for the chance to read this title!

[Andrew Dittmar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Do Admit! The Mitford Sisters and Me by Mimi Pond


The biggest sin this book commits is the fact that all of the text is incorporated into the illustrations themselves. This means that it can sometimes be hard to determine the intended flow of Pond's narrative. Also, chapter headings or at least page numbers would've been helpful for organizational purposes - this is a TOME and it was hard to track for my own organizational purposes.

I had never heard of the Mitfords until a few years ago when I read the obituary Molly Ivins published for Jessica Mitford, which was included in one of Ivins' collections of columns. From there I learned briefly about Unity, but the rest of the characters were basically unknown to me.

That isn't true anymore. This family is fascinating. One family managed to traverse the full scope of the 20th century - and I do mean the FULL scope of 20th century. We have two close intimates of Adolf Hitler, one who remained an unapologetic Holocaust denier for decades following World War II. (Earlier this year I saw a documentary about Leni Riefenstahl, and a number of other surviving Nazis were included in that documentary - what on earth was it with major media organizations who gave unapologetic or pseudo-apologetic former Nazis major well-paying platforms in media?!) Intimates of Maya Angelou and Evelyn Waugh and the Kennedys and the royals. Communists, fascists, best-selling authors, charming media personalities, a public suicide attempt... my goodness!

Five stars, with trepidation regarding the form.


Reading history:
Normally I keep this in my private notes section, but I'm moving it. Yay!

Reading history was not added on Goodreads, but was instead kept on a post-it note with the book.


Started December 21st, 2025.
Finished December 24th, 2025.


December 21st, 2025: read pp. 1 through "Extra: Hitler's Europe Invaded" (D-Day page) in physical copy.

December 23rd, 2025: read "Germany retaliated beginning June 13th" through Evelyn Waugh on "The American Way of Death" in physical copy.

December 24th, 2025 (after midnight): "The American Way of Death" blockbuster page through the end in physical copy.

[Stephanie Tournas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mimi Pond explores her own childhood in juxtaposition to the hexad of Mitford sisters that she learned about through her parents’ copy of Jessica Mitford’s book The American Way of Death (a landmark exposé on the funeral business). Although Pond grew up in the 1960s, she identified with the Mitford sisters’ efforts to reinvent themselves in a society which assumed women were either wives, society ladies or prostitutes. The six sisters were known both in Great Britain, where they grew up, and the U.S., as they made the headlines through celebrity or infamy for a good part of the 20th century. Each lead a fascinating life as British landed elite with parents who could provide neither money nor guidance. Nancy and Jessica became writers; Pamela and Deborah strove for riches through rich husbands or famous friends; Diane and Unity were unabashed fascists who embraced Hitler. They were often completely at odds politically, but always defaulted to loving and supporting one another.

This hefty tome is a fascinating read for the sisters’ exploits alone. And combined with the historical events of two world wars and political events in Great Britain and the U.S., the book is really a whirlwind tour of the first half of the 20th century. Pond’s unique combination of visual images and facts is mind boggling, and the graphic compositions includes small vignette panels to full page panels, with facsimiles of letters, headlines and more. Sometimes the sisters are portrayed as game show contestants, sometimes debate participants or characters in a trashy novel. Black and Prussian blue ink artwork melds facts and emotions with solid reporting as well as humor. I laughed out loud at the illustration of Bryan Guinness, a suitor of Diana’s – he’s presented as a teen heartthrob on the cover of the 1970s teen magazine Tiger Beat, except it’s “London Beat” with Guinness’s face in the center of a heart and fan headlines such as “My goodness, could he be your Guinness?” I appreciate that Pond includes voluminous sources from her research.

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating overview that covers not only the lives of all 6 famous/infamous Mitford sisters but also *why* they've provided such longlasting fascination. The graphic novel format generally works incredibly well for it - the only downside for me, personally, was that a few of the pages were so busy that I struggled to read them. (However, I should also add the context that I was reading this Christmas gift while very, very tired, so...?)

My only other nitpick was that I think the author/artist was overly generous in her description of the (genuinely brilliant and very successful) marketing plans Debo made for Chatsworth Hall, which she describes as ensuring "that Chatsworth and its many treasures are there today for the enjoyment of everyone." Speaking as someone who lived not far from Chatsworth at one point and would have liked to visit it but quailed at the massive entry fee...I think Debo did it as a very sharp financial plan for her own family and estates, honestly. (Understandable, certainly, but not for the good of the masses, especially at those prices!)

However, with those nitpicks out of the way, I still devoured it within a day and am now planning to read some of Nancy's biographies that I hadn't picked up yet. I'd thought I already knew the Mitford story pretty well, but this included a bunch of new and interesting details and did a great job of balancing all six sisters' dramatic lives. I ended it with a jumble of conflicting feelings, which I think was intentional on the part of the author/artist, who generally did a good job of laying out just how starkly unforgivable and genuinely loathsome some Mitford sisters' beliefs and actions really were, while also showing the complexity and depth of their family bonds - and the amount of good done by two of the other sisters, too (without ever making them out as perfect people).

I now want to read the Mitford sisters' letters to each other - and re-read Love in a Cold Climate, as well!

[Denise · Rating 4 out of 5]

[4.5/5] This book is an incredibly impressive feat of writing, research, and illustration.

I may have been very peripherally aware of an influential family called the Mitfords before I saw this book, but I was so intrigued by the scope of this graphic novel that I figured I'd give it a go (I did read Pond's semi-autobiographical graphic novel Over Easy a few years back and, while similarly technically impressive, I didn't totally love it narrative-wise). I did expect the "and me" aspect of the book's subtitle to be a bit more prominent as a framework of sorts, but at the same time, the Mitford history and narratives were so immersive that I don't know if I would have appreciated that in the end. Pond's fascination with the Mitfords is our entry point, but the "why" of that isn't entirely clear throughout the book. Pond's last thank you to them for reasserting the importance of women's stories (as told in their own voices) is powerful, but it didn't entirely come through the rest of the book. In any case, I was completely drawn into this portrait of a gaggle of sisters and their family, equal parts fascinating and flawed. Pond does well to never skim over the truly awful behaviors and beliefs, and showing a realistic portrait of the privileges and pitfalls of this type of upbringing, and how each sister put their advantage to use (for better or for worse...).

Pond's art is so evocative and really wrangles so much in terms of distinguishing the sisters and their individual stories. There were times her intricate page/text designs got a bit hard to read as they looped and whirled around the page, but at the same time, the design fit the story. And all that Prussian blue ink...gorgeous!

I love this type of nonfiction because it was not only totally engaging in and of itself, but made me want to immediately pick up a dozen other books by and about its subjects. I sense I may find myself in a Mitford rabbit hole for some time after this...