Admirers and detractors use the same words to describe Jessica Mitford: subversive, muckraker, mischief-maker. But those who knew her best simply called her Decca. Born into one of Britain’s most famous aristocratic families, at the age of nineteen she ran away with Winston Churchill’s nephew. Their elopement severed ties with her privilege, a rupture only exacerbated by the controversial life she would go on to lead for seventy-eight years. Yoked to every important event for nearly all of the twentieth century, Decca not only was defined by the history she witnessed, but by bearing witness helped to define that history.