Mitford family Vanessa, Atalanta, and Jessica. A portion of Jessica Mitford's writing is used as a spoken-word introduction to the song "Last Act of Defiance", about the New Mexico State Penitentiary riot, on thrash metal band Exodus's 1989 album "Fabulous Disaster". Mitford sisters by William Acton Mitford family The Mitford family is a gentry (minor aristocratic) English family whose main family line had seats at Mitford, Northumberland. Several heads of the family served as High Sheriff of Northumberland. A junior line, with seats at Newton Park, Northumberland, and Exbury House, Hampshire, descends via the historian William Mitford (1744–1827) and were twice elevated
Nancy Mitford in favour of the new arrival was a further source of outrage to Nancy, and throughout their childhood and into young adulthood she continued to vent her displeasure on her sister. In January 1909 a brother, Tom was born, and in June 1910 another sister, Diana, followed. That summer, to relieve the pressure on what was becoming an overcrowded nursery, Nancy attended the nearby Francis Holland School. The few months she spent there represented almost the whole of her formal schooling; in the autumn the family moved to a larger house in Victoria Road, Kensington, after which Nancy was educated