Tales My Father Taught Me

Tales My Father Taught Me (1963) – Osbert Sitwell
Readers Union | ISBN: None
Condition: Very Good | Sold by Crappy Old Books

Fathers. Those formidable figures whose principal responsibilities traditionally include dispensing wisdom, correcting one’s manners, explaining why modern society is going to the dogs and recounting family anecdotes that become steadily more extraordinary with each repetition. Some fathers teach their children how to mend bicycles or grow vegetables. Others provide an education in the peculiarities of aristocratic society, eccentric relatives and the magnificent absurdities of the British upper classes.

Osbert Sitwell, fortunately for his readers, belonged to the second category.

In Tales My Father Taught Me, the celebrated poet, novelist, critic and chronicler of aristocratic eccentricity turns his attention to the stories, recollections and extraordinary personalities associated with his father, Sir George Sitwell, a man whose remarkable individuality would have presented a considerable challenge to any novelist attempting to invent him.

Sir George was an aristocrat, antiquarian, landowner, eccentric and enthusiastic exponent of ideas that occasionally bore only a passing resemblance to conventional wisdom. His interests ranged from historical research and garden design to matters of domestic organisation, and he possessed the enviable confidence of a man who apparently saw no reason why the rest of the world should not adopt his personal opinions immediately.

The Sitwell family itself was hardly an ordinary household. Osbert and his siblings, Edith and Sacheverell, became prominent figures in twentieth-century British literary and artistic life, establishing reputations for originality, wit and an enthusiastic disregard for the conventions of respectable society.

Growing up amid such personalities was unlikely to produce a conventional childhood. Family life involved aristocratic traditions, strong opinions, elaborate social rituals and enough eccentric behaviour to provide several lifetimes of literary material.

Sitwell’s account celebrates the peculiar world of inherited privilege and Edwardian grandeur, where the distinction between charming individuality and complete absurdity was often determined by the size of one’s country estate.

There is something wonderfully British about a social system in which a wealthy gentleman can develop the most extraordinary habits and be celebrated as an eccentric, while somebody with considerably less money behaving in precisely the same fashion might attract the attention of the local authorities.

Behind the humour lies a fascinating portrait of a vanished social world, populated by individuals whose assumptions about class, authority, family and personal importance belonged to an age increasingly overtaken by modernity.

Osbert Sitwell’s elegant prose, affectionate mockery and eye for the ridiculous make this an entertaining excursion into family history and the peculiarities of the English aristocracy. The result is a reminder that the truth about certain families can be considerably stranger than anything invented by a writer of fiction.

This 1963 Readers Union edition, offered in Very Good condition by Crappy Old Books, is an appealing acquisition for collectors of the Sitwell family, enthusiasts of literary memoirs and readers fascinated by the eccentricities of Britain’s privileged classes.

A delightful journey into a world of formidable fathers, unusual opinions and aristocratic peculiarities, where wealth provided the freedom to be magnificently unreasonable.

And proof that having an eccentric father can be an enormous advantage to a writer.

Particularly when the old gentleman supplies enough material to fill a book without anybody having to invent a thing.

Keep browsing: See more Biography books Other books by Osbert Sitwell