Dimensions
162 x 243 x 31mm
Vanessa Nicolson is the granddaughter of Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson. She was born to an illustrious name and an unhappy marriage. Her father, the art historian Ben Nicolson, was homosexual and his marriage to Vanessa's Italian mother fell apart when Vanessa was very young.
In this powerful and meditative memoir Vanessa Nicolson chronicles her fractured childhood and wild youth, including holidays at Sissinghurst Castle with her cousins, and her experience of a startlingly liberal English boarding school. Interlinked with the story of her own life is that of her beloved daughter Rosa, who died of epilepsy at the point when she was emerging into adult life.
This book is a time-piece of the 1970s, and a profound meditation on the meaning of cultural privilege in the context of emotional deprivation.
