Osbert Sitwell

Adam Kirsch

...a model biography: meticulous, intelligent, fair, succinct and sympathe-tic to its subject even when his actions and opinions are distasteful.
— Washington Post Book World

Miami Herald

...a fine book about a man with at least some claim on posterity's regard.

Roger Kimball

It is Philip Ziegler's achievement, in Osbert Sitwell. Mr. Ziegler is a pro. He tells a beguiling story, has an eye for the definitive anecdote and leavens his criticism with generous amounts of sympathy. Above all a sheer enjoyment.
— Wall Street Journal

Publishers Weekly

Curiously, Osbert, the senior of the three extraordinary children of Sir George, has never had a major biography of his own, though both his siblings have. Perhaps would-be biographers thought that, after the glories of his multivolume autobiography, beginning with Left Hand, Right Hand, there was very little a biographer could add--and that any work he or she could do was bound to be overshadowed by the lambent prose and sprawling magnificence of their subject's own work. Fortunately, Philip Ziegler, who has created notable studies of Lord Melbourne, Lady Diana Cooper and Lord Mountbatten, took up the challenge and was able to survive with credit on both counts. He has the measure of the English aristocracy and its often peculiar ways, writes with considerable panache and has largely succeeded in making the extremely odd Osbert comprehensible if never entirely likable. It seems strange now, when they are seen largely as eccentric fringe figures, how Osbert, Sacheverell and Edith dominated English literary culture for much of the period between the wars, even to the point of becoming journalistic celebrities. On their American tours in the 1950s, Osbert and Edith became almost as celebrated over here. Edith had a fierce but small poetic talent and Osbert was a highly skilled man of letters who could turn his hand with equal facility to verse and travel journals, but who only really hit his stride in the magisterial memoirs. Indelibly snobbish, thin-skinned, imbued with all the unpleasant prejudices against Jews and dark-skinned people that were endemic to his time and class, Osbert could also be extremely generous, was a warm and witty (and endlessly extravagant) host and cherished many notable friendships. Despite his efforts, he may have never really escaped the shadow of Sir George, which he tried so hard to exorcise with ridicule in his memoirs. In midlife he implicitly acknowledged his homosexuality by taking on a companion, David Horner, who drove a wedge between Osbert and the rest of the family. The later onset of Parkinson's disease, against which he struggled hopelessly but courageously for years, further clouded his life at the close. Osbert's is a story that encompasses wide swathes of English cultural and social life in the first half of the century. Ziegler has told it so stylishly that even its hypercritical subject might have approved. Illus. not seen by PW. (Dec.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

The Sitwells--Edith, Osbert, and Sacheverell--were perhaps the most famous literary family between the wars. This well-done biography examines the life of poet, novelist, and essayist Osbert, best known for his memoir Left Hand, Right Hand. Ziegler (The Black Death) details Osbert's early life, from his schooling at Eton to his military service in World War I (which served to instill in him a permanent resentment at the futility of war) to his development as a writer. Ziegler digs deep to discern truth from fiction in his memoir and provides insights into Osbert's relationships with the likes of T.S. Eliot, Aldous Huxley, and Cyril Connoll--to name a few. He also examines Osbert's long-term relationship with David Horner. An informative look not only at an individual but an era now long gone; recommended for all literary collections.--Ronald Ray Ratliff, Emporia P.L., KS Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Booknews

Fresh from biographies of other 20th-century British figures, Ziegler treats poet, novelist, essayist, and eccentric Sitwell, who, with his siblings Edith and Sacheverell, were the of the 1920s. He gain public notoriety after World War II with the publication of his autobiography , but had been deeply involved in the literary scene since 1918. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Frank Kermode

... an elegant and expertly written account of a very peculiar man...Philip Ziegler concludes by asking himself whether Osbert Sitwell was ''worth a book,'' and of course his answer is yes: for one thing the autobiography is an ''unequivocal masterpiece,'' but even if that were not so ''the entertainment was so great, the dramatis personae so bizarre, the background so rich'' that all his trouble was justified. Certainly Sitwell was worth this book, with its well-judged tone -- sympathetic, yet loving the bizarrerie and the richness, teasing as well as affectionate. Behind its pages lies a great deal of hard research in archives as far apart as Renishaw, Yorkshire and Austin, Tex. Dozens of people were interviewed, many of them now dead, their reminiscences safely stored in Tulsa, Okla. The least one can say is that nobody else need ask Ziegler's question for a long time to come; which is not to say, this being an age of biography, that nobody will.
—The New York Times Book Review