8:40am Thursday 29th July 2010
By Phil Bloomfield
INHERITANCE
Robert Sackville-West (Bloomsbury, £20)
The current occupier of Knole in Kent, the 7th Lord Sackville, tells us the story of the house and the Sackville family, who have lived in it for more than 400 years. We start in 1604, when Thomas Sackville bought and improved the manor. It was a grand place that he thought suited a man of his reputation; a house he could show off. Thomas had been a favoured courtier of Queen Elizabeth, trusted with continental missions to find her a suitable husband.
After this interesting ancestor, the author rattles through his family history, with a chapter per owner, outlining the changes to the fabric and the surrounding gardens and deer park. The manor has links with kings, queens and nobility, as well as with the novelists Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf. Knole was the birthplace and childhood home of Vita Sackville-West, who went on to create the gardens at Sissinghurst. Knole is now owned by the National Trust, although the family still lives there. Thousands visit every year to admire the 13 state rooms, laid out much as they were in the 18th century to impress visitors with the wealth of the Sackvilles. The house includes world-renowned secondhand Royal furniture, important paintings and the first Knole settee.
As a historian, Robert Sackville-West has used his skills well in his masterful assessment of the evidence he has had readily to hand at Knole. The family members appear to have been serial hoarders, so he had plenty of written material, diaries, accounts, etc., and lots of pictures to examine and put into context. I was grateful for the excellent family tree and the photographs and portraits, as I frequently turned to them to enhance my understanding and enjoyment.
Inheritance reads like a literary version of “Who do you think you are?” only lengthier and in reverse order, or perhaps more like a soap opera, for there is a lot of dirty linen, frankly revealed. Vita Sackville-West once described her family as “a race too prodigal, too amorous, too indolent and too melancholy; a rotten lot, and nearly all stark staring mad.” There’s all of that in here. After researching for and writing this book, Robert Sackville-West must look in the mirror and wonder about his own gene mix.
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