Connoisseur and critic, traveler and biographer, SIR OSBERT SITWEEL had furnished for himself a home on Carlyle Square which was in its way an extraordinary museum of the twentieth century. Here is what went through his mind when at last he had to more elsewhere.
SIR OSBERT SITWELL’Sfive volumes of reminiscences, which were published in this country under the AtlanticLittle, Brown imprint, stand as a unique monument to Victorian and Edwardian England. Recently he has been at work on a new book, about his father, TALES MY FATHER TAUGHT ME. In the following essay he gives us a glimpse of what New york was like in the late twenties, before the Depression cast its shadow.
SIR OSBERT SITWELL’Sfive volumes of reminiscences, which were published in this country under the AtlanticLittle, Brown imprint, stand as a peerless monument to Victorian and Edwardian England, and those who have read, them will be unlikely to forget the brilliant portrait of the original and irascible Sir George Sitwell and of Henry Moat, his discerning and eloquent butler. Sir Osbert is now engaged in a further book about his father, from which we are privileged to draw these lively encounters.
SIR OSBERT SITWELL’S four volumes of reminiscences, which were published in this country under the AtlanticLittle, Brown imprint, stand as a peerless monument to Victorian and Edwardian England, and those who have read them will be unlikely to forget the brilliant portrait of the original and irascible Sir George Sitwell and of Henry Moat, his discerning and eloquent butler. Sir Osbert is now engaged in a further book about his father, from which we are privileged to draw these lively encounters.
Author, connoisseur of modern art, and country squire, SIR OSBERT SITWELLbegan in 1942 the writing of his monumental autobiography, a fire-volume work which, on its completion with NOBLE ESSENCES in 1950, was described by the London TIMES as “an outstanding contribution to literature.”
A master of Fnglish prose most recently celebrated for his fire-volume autobiography, which was described by the London Times “as an outstanding contribution to Literature,” SIR OSBERT SITWELL did not establish himself as a free lance until his resignation from the Guards in 1919. Then at Swan Walk, the house in Chelsea which he shared with his brother Sacheverell, he began to devote himself to his books and his collection of modern paintings - a performance which soon proclaimed his independence as a critic and his talent as a writer. A selection of his short stories is being reprinted this year, and to the group he has added this new and delightful satire.
Not since the Brontës has an English family produced three such talented writers as Edith, Sachevcrell, and Sir Osbert Sitwell. The story of their home and heritage at Renishaw; the immortal portrait of their father, Sir George Sitwell; the account of their growing up in the Golden Age; the writers and artists who were their friends after the ordeal of the First World War — all this SIR OSBERT SITWELL has told in the five-volume autobiography which he wrote between 1943 and 1950, a work now humorous, now pensive, and always illuminating.