Osbert Sitwell

Why do I keep thinking this book could have been more lucid, organized better, more telling? I agree with all the previous reviewers here -- it is a good book, and at the end one knows more about the Sitwells than at the begining, and yes, comes to like Osbert. I don't know about admiring his work, though. I'd have appreciated some examples of the prose, especially some excerpts from the autobiography volumes. But I kept wanting a clearer picture. There could have been more details about his various relationships; the progress through his life could have been more linear, I'd have liked to know more about the creation of his works, from the writing to the publishing. Apparently Osbert and Edith were respected in the literary community, or parts of it. I'd have liked to know more about that. Ziegler did make it clear at the end that with time Joyce, Eliot, Woolf, Lawrence etc., were elevated to the status of classic writers, while Osbert is now pretty much unknown and obscure. What accounted for his big impact at the time? Well, lots of things to ponder -- so well worth reading.

Osbert Sitwell, in many ways, could be considered a dreadful man: irascible and litigious, snobbish and bigoted, a W.C. Fieldsian hater of dogs and kids, even a sometime admirer of Italian Fascism. Philip Ziegler's biography notes Sitwell's glaring faults, but also his shining virtues, so that in the end Sitwell appears profoundly sympathetic, even lovable. He was accused throughout his life of being an aristocratic dilettante, yet in the end he produced more than 50 books, including some of the most vivid memoirs and art criticism of any English author. He was notably quarrelsome--as were his siblings Edith and Sacheverell--yet to family and friends he showed touching loyalty and generosity. Osbert Sitwell was one of the biggest fish in the big pond that was English literary society between the wars, and Ziegler does a brilliant job not only of portraying that society but of delineating Sitwell's significance in it--both as an individual and as a member of the brilliant, outrageous Sitwell family.

Philip Ziegler's Osbert Sitwell provides a new biography of the poet and novelist, surveying the Sitwell family and the literary temperament of the times which influenced and formed his life. Recommended for any student of the Sitwell family.

Author Philip Ziegler poses the question: Is Osbert Sitwell worth a book? Naturally, having written a superb and colorful biography of a second-rate writer but world class eccentric, his answer is yes. I agree. Osbert is a piece of work -- and a bundle of contradictions. An elitist with kindness and thoughtfulness for all classes of people; a pacifist who liked to be known as Captain Sitwell for his brief stint in a fashionable regiment; an epicure and lover of luxury who was nonetheless broke for much of his life; and a never-quite-in-the-top-rank poet and novelist whose most enduring work is his autobiography. Ziegler's biography is meticulously researched and documented; fluent, witty and affectionate.