Splendours and Miseries: A Life of Sacheverell Sitwell

by Sarah Bradford

Discusses the life and times of the poet, author, traveler, and aesthetic adventurer, examining his role as a cultural pioneer, his extraordinary family, and his friendships

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction

486 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1993

About the author

Educated at St. Mary’s Convent, Shaftesbury Dorset, where she won a State Scholarship and at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, where she won a College Scholarship in History, Sarah Bradford is an historian and biographer who has travelled extensively, living in the West Indies, Portugal and Italy. She speaks four languages which have been invaluable in her research for her various books, particularly The Englishman’s Wine, the Story of Port (the first book on the subject written by a woman), Portugal and Madeira. She worked in the Manuscript Department of Christie’s London, travelling for the Department and valuing manuscripts from the fifteenth to twentieth centuries, an experience which enabled her to write Cesare Borgia (used by the BBC as the source of their series ‘The Borgias’, for which she wrote the novelisation of the scripts) and, most recently, Lucrezia Borgia

Reviews

[Will · Rating 3 out of 5]

“[Elinor] Wylie had arrived with a trunkful of elaborate toilettes; one of the insider house-party jokes was to see how many times she could be persuaded to change and exactly how much flattery she could swallow. The jokes turned sour after a wild midnight dash to Stonehenge... where she was hoisted on to one of the stones by a party of feigning worshippers. Wylie, dressed in a silver-lamé evening gown, was so moved by the occasion that she recited some of her poems in a strong New Jersey accent. At the house later, to everyone’s embarrassment, she burst into tears, said that everyone was laughing at her and demanded to be taken back to London.”