Osbert Sitwell (1892–1969)

Difficult for me to add much as a reviewer but it is a fascinating glimpse into an aristocratic family and the Victorian-era childhood of Sir Osbert Sitwell. For a reader in 2020, the high style of the writing can be almost as challenging as Shakespearian verse to move through. Long, meandering sentences with colons, semi-colons, dashes, and ellipses, and loaded with vocabulary so rich, you might feel like you're coming down with verbal gout. Sir Sitwell is highly perceptive of nature, his family history, and the artistic scene at the time. The final chapter of the book focuses on a family portrait painted by John Singer Sargent. The portrait was a sign of status for the parents but the childhood glimpse of the great artist by a young Osbert and his sister Edith influenced them later in life to become artists in their own write. I'll have to let this one sit for a while before I decide on whether I have the stamina to read the other five volumes. In any case, I'm glad there were writers like Osbert Sitwell with his sensibilities about the world giving us a slice of life that must now sound like an alien world to an audience a little more than a hundred years later.

The inner leaf of this particular edition shows inky hand prints of the author.… (more)

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Linda
Dec 16, 2011 Linda rated it liked it
Ignore the silly title - this is a beautifully written travelogue of Asia, and particularly Peking, in the 1930s. Among other things, Sitwell visits a remote temple where the last of the imperial eunuchs live out their days in poverty and isolation, and catalogues the great range of the cries and songs of the street pedlars of Peking. It's strangely - or relievedly, depending on your perspective - apolitical, considering the violent politics of the time, politics that included the stirrings of Communist revolution and Japanese aggression.… (more)