Sackville-West, Robert – The Bell Bookshop

Knole

Emma — Tue, 20 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Sumptuous photographs by designer Ashley Hicks (who recently photographed the interiors of Buckingham Palace) capture the smouldering spirit of the place: from the state rooms, which house possibly the finest collection of royal Stuart furniture in the world, to the private apartments and gardens, to the behind-the-scenes labyrinth of cellars and attics. Knole provides a window onto English history. The characters who people the pages of the book-the grave Elizabethan statesman, the good-for-nothing gadabout at the seedy Court of King James I, the dashing Cavalier, the Restoration rake, the 3rd Duke, that magnificent and melancholy representative of the ancien regime, the whiskery and dark-hearted Mortimer who caused three nights of rioting in 1884 by closing the park to visitors-are all representative of their age (members of a family described by Vita Sackville-West as “a race too prodigal, too amorous, too weak, too indolent, and too melancholy”: in short, “a rotten lot, and nearly all stark staring mad.” Of course, Vita’s torn legacy with the property prompted her dear friend Virginia Woolf to pen Orlando, furthering the place’s fame and glamorous lustre. Similarly, the architectural and decorative features of the house, so splendidly revealed by Ashley’s photographs, illustrate the different tastes of successive ages, from Thomas Sackville’s seventeenth-century makeover of a ramshackle medieval mansion to an early twentieth-century suite of rooms designed in the Bohemian style. Knole has never been illuminated in this way before.

The Searchers

Emma — Thu, 01 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

SHORTLISTED FOR THE HISTORICAL WRITERS’ ASSOCIATION CROWN AWARDS 2022‘Compelling and often horrifying’ THE TIMES Best Paperbacks of 2022The epic, moving stories of Britain’s search to recover, identify and honour the missing soldiers of the First World WarBy the end of the First World War, the whereabouts of more than half a million British soldiers were unknown. Most were presumed dead, lost forever under the battlefields of northern France and Flanders.In The Searchers, Robert Sackville-West brings together the extraordinary, moving accounts of those who dedicated their lives to the search for the missing. These stories reveal the remarkable lengths to which people will go to give meaning to their loss: Rudyard Kipling’s quest for his son’s grave; E.M. Forster’s conversations with traumatised soldiers in hospital in Alexandria; desperate attempts to communicate with the spirits of the dead; the campaign to establish the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior; and the exhumation and reburial in military cemeteries of hundreds of thousands of bodies. It was a search that would span a century: from the department set up to investigate the fate of missing comrades in the war’s aftermath to the present day, when DNA profiling continues to aid efforts to recover, identify and honour these men. As the rest of the country found ways to repair and move on, countless families were consumed by this mission, undertaking arduous, often hopeless, journeys to discover what happened to their husbands, brothers and sons. Giving prominence to the personal battles of those left behind, The Searchers brings the legacy of war vividly to life in a testament to the bravery, compassion and resilience of the human spirit.

The Searchers

Emma — Thu, 30 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

**Selected as a Book of the Year by the Spectator and the Daily Telegraph**‘Fascinating … carefully researched and beautifully written’ DAVID DIMBLEBY‘Utterly riveting’ SUNDAY TELEGRAPH‘Robert-Sackville West writes tenderly about death and remembrance’ GERARD DEGROOT, THE TIMES______________________By the end of the First World War, the whereabouts of more than half a million British soldiers were unknown. Most were presumed dead, lost forever under the battlefields of northern France and Flanders.In The Searchers, Robert Sackville-West brings together the extraordinary, moving accounts of those who dedicated their lives to the search for the missing. These stories reveal the remarkable lengths to which people will go to give meaning to their loss: Rudyard Kipling’s quest for his son’s grave; E.M. Forster’s conversations with traumatised soldiers in hospital in Alexandria; desperate attempts to communicate with the spirits of the dead; the campaign to establish the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior; and the exhumation and reburial in military cemeteries of hundreds of thousands of bodies. It was a search that would span a century: from the department set up to investigate the fate of missing comrades in the war’s aftermath, to the present day, when DNA profiling continues to aid efforts to recover, identify and honour these men. As the rest of the country found ways to repair and move on, countless families were consumed by this mission, undertaking arduous, often hopeless, journeys to discover what happened to their husbands, brothers and sons. Giving prominence to the deep, personal battles of those left behind, The Searchers brings the legacy of war vividly to life in a testament to the bravery, compassion and resilience of the human spirit. ‘Remarkable’ JOHN CAREY, SUNDAY TIMES‘This is an outstanding book’ LITERARY REVIEW‘Deeply moving’ DAILY MAIL

The Disinherited

Emma — Thu, 23 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

In the small hours of the morning of 3 June 1914, a woman and her husband were found dead in a sparsely furnished apartment in Paris. It was only when the identity of the couple was revealed in the English press a fortnight later that the full story emerged. The man, Henry Sackville-West, had shot himself minutes after the death of his wife from cancer; but Henry’s suicidal despair had been driven equally by the failure of his claim to be the legitimate son of Lord Sackville and heir to Knole. The Disinherited reveals the secrets and lies at the heart of an English dynasty, unravelling the parallel lives of Henri’s four illegitimate siblings: in particular his older sister, Victoria, who on becoming Lady Sackville and mistress of Knole, by marriage, consigned her brothers and sisters to lives of poverty and disappointment.