My Grandfather & Father, Dear Father

by Denis Constanduros

These delightfully funny and affectionate portraits of the two most influential male figures in the author’s life conjure up two strongly defined characters and the times in which they lived. The two could hardly have been more different. Denis’s maternal grandfather, though surviving sturdily into the reign of George V, was to his grandson a character from the ‘warm, gas-lit, stable-smelling past’ of the Victorian age and symbolized everything that was convivial and straightforward and reliable. His father Stephanos Constanduros, however, was flamboyant, melodramatic and full of grand ideas for solving his perpetual financial problems at a stroke – a tendency which ultimately led to disaster.

The first of these memoirs paints a beautifully subtle and amusing picture of Grandfather and his household in Kensington Gore, with its visiting aunts and its below-stairs characters. The old man with his feet up before the fire after a day’s hunting; stumping on his short legs through the hushed galleries of the Royal Academy; perusing the obituary columns of The Times; or pouring a glass of what he called ‘sherry wine’ – My Grandfather is much more than an evocation of an endearing yet tough old party. It is a portrait of an age, and has the texture of life itself. Father, Dear Father, Denis’s account of his own childhood, published for the first time with some newly discovered line drawings, catapults us into an entirely different world, full of characters who could have come from one of his aunt Mabel Constanduros’s comedies. Propped up by Grandfather’s largesse in a hideous house in Sutton, this was a household in denial, and no one more so than Denis’s father, with his bookmaker’s bills and money-making schemes. It couldn’t last, and gradually the whole farrago collapsed in a way that was both ludicrous and poignant. My Grandfather and Father, Dear Father were loved by listeners when they were read on Radio 4. It’s easy to see why: they are so fresh, so entertaining and pitch-perfect.

272 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 2012

About the author

Denis Constanduros (1910-78) was an artist and a writer for radio and television, based in the United Kingdom. He often wrote for radio with his aunt Mabel Constanduros.

Reviews

[Rosetta Whyte · Rating 3 out of 5]

These memoirs are rich in atmosphere and honestly told. A very good read