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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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Sitwell family
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Three children who grew up at Renishaw Hall, an ancestral seat in Derbyshire. Each became a writer. The eldest, Edith (1887–1964, DBE 1954), was the most original – in her work and also in her famously eccentric appearance and dress. The public became aware of her talent with the first public performance in 1923 of *Façade, a piece which has grown steadily in popularity. Its jazzy rhythms and jagged speech patterns were untypical of most of her later work, which was often romantic and elegiac, with an increasingly Christian element; she became a Roman Catholic in 1955.
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Her brother Osbert (1892–1969, 5th bt 1943) was a poet and novelist but is remembered in particular for his 5-volume autobiography (Left Hand, Right Hand 1944, The Scarlet Tree 1946, Great Morning! 1947, Laughter in the Next Room 1948, Noble Essences 1950). The youngest of the three, Sacheverell (1897–1988, 6th bt 1969), was like the others a poet but was also an art historian; Southern Baroque Art (1924) and German Baroque Art (1927) appeared when the subject was far from fashionable.
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