The Nicolson and Sackville-West families have more myths than most, endless iterations and fictions, a continuous process of public and private retelling. Historian Juliet Nicolson turns to her own family in a book that is part memoir, part family history, part social document. She’s particularly interested in inheritance and the way mother-daughter relationships have changed over the generations (in English upper-class families, at least), the increase in emotional openness.
Charting seven generations from her Spanish great-great-grandmother, Pepita, down to her granddaughter Imogen, via her imposing grandmother Vita, the book is strongest when exploring the tender relationship between Nicolson and her father after her mother’s death as a result of alcoholism, her own struggles with the same condition, the knife-twist of grief when one loses a parent, and the emotional rush of motherhood.
A House Full of Daughters is published by Chatto & Windus (£16.99). Click here to buy it for £16.99
