Osbert Sitwell.

by Philip Ziegler

Perhaps his own 1941 Who's Who entry best encapsulated Osbert Sitwell's "For the past 22 years has conducted, in conjunction with his brother and sister, a series of skirmishes and hand-to-hand battles against the Philistine." Although he considered himself a poet and wrote several fine short stories in addition to his brilliant autobiography ( Left Hand, Right Hand! ), Sitwell was best known as an artistic provocateur. In concert with his older sister Edith and younger brother Sacheverell, he delighted in shocking the bourgeoisie with such aggressively modernist works as Façade . (This no-holds-barred performance piece, in which the three siblings declaimed poetry through a megaphone, belongs less to the history of theater than to the annals of PR--but that, too, may have pleased the Sitwells as an act of Warholian prescience.) Born into a wealthy, well-connected English family, none of the three children ever quite fit in. Philip Ziegler sums up the situation in Osbert Sitwell : "The aristocrats felt Osbert to be extravagantly artistic; to the artists he seemed suspiciously aristocratic." Ziegler astutely chronicles his subject's dicey relationships with an airhead mother and overbearing father (Sir George's "view of contemporary life was almost entirely solipsistic and rendered the more eccentric by his firm assumption that, whatever subject might be in question, it had almost certainly been done better in the Middle Ages"). He manages to separate Osbert's story from those of Edith and Sacheverell without scanting the siblings' fierce and mutual devotion. Nor does he overlook their propensity for quarrels with the gifted and famous, most notably Noël Coward. This is not, in the end, a portrait of a great man. But it will persuade many readers that its subject mattered --that "it was possible to dislike Osbert Sitwell, to mock him, even to despise him, but it was very difficult to ignore him." Thanks to Ziegler's judicious life, it should be not only difficult but impossible. --Wendy Smith

Genres: Biography, British Literature

Hardcover

First published July 21, 1999

About the author

Philip Ziegler was a British biographer and historian known for his meticulously researched works on historical figures and events. After studying at Eton and New College, Oxford, he served in the British Foreign Service, with postings in Laos, South Africa, Colombia, and NATO. He later transitioned into publishing and writing, eventually becoming a distinguished biographer.
His notable works include Mountbatten: The Official Biography, Edward VIII: The Official Biography, and The Black Death. He also wrote about figures such as Lord Melbourne, Harold Wilson, and George VI. Over the years, Ziegler contributed to major publications like The Spectator, The Times, and History Today.
His personal life was marked by tragedy when his first wife was killed during a home invasion in Bogotá in 1967. He later remarried and continued his literary career until his passing in 2023 at the age of 93.

Reviews

[Yooperprof · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sir Osbert Sitwell, 5th Baronet, was a minor British writer, most associated with the 1920s and 30s, one of the Sitwell writing family. A minor figure in English literature, he published poetry, novels and travel books, but he is most remembered today for his multi-volume autobiography, a classic of the nostalgic memoir genre. Here he receives the full biographical treatment that would have been accorded a major writer.

Philip Ziegler is a sympathetic but firm assessor of Sir Osbert's life and work, always plausible in his judgements, and ever alert to the nuances of a complex and multi-faceted personality.