In My Fathers House – Miranda Seymour

My mother talks eagerly to the curator about a keeper’s pet owl and the laundry room where she kept two angora rabbits. I peer down narrow slits through which oil was poured on to the heads of medieval intruders; my mother has found the walk above the castle chapel from which she dropped paper streamers upon the bald head of a visiting minister.

I’m down in a dungeon, contemplating the life of Henry V’s twenty French prisoners, kept in windowless gloom fifty feet below the tower where my grandfather, centuries later, would hide from view. She’s walking along the Long Gallery, recalling the elaborate family pantomimes in which she, as the youngest child, invariably took the smallest part. Sitting in the Chirk Tandoori that night, while rain beats against the windows, we replay our favourite moments from the day. Mine was climbing an airy flight of stairs to the upper drawing-room, still lit by candles and the silvery reflections of the long glasses on its walls.

I didn’t need to close my eyes to see the little girl squaring up to the artist in her lemon-yellow frock, centre stage. Nothing had changed. ‘And yours?’ I ask. I’m sure she’ll pick the garden where she walked beside Rudyard Kipling, listening to the stories he shaped to fit the setting. I’m forgetting that her last companion at the castle was a haughty tabby cat. The moment she chooses is the one in which, stalking out of the mist and along the gravel path, a grey tabby advanced to whisk a bushy tail around my mother’s calves, before vanishing behind a wall of clipped yew.

Her eyes are shining at the memory. ‘He was welcoming me home, wasn’t he!’ And she reaches forward to pat my hand. ‘I’m glad we came!’ I’ve asked my mother whether, back in 1945, she was told about the deferred sale of Thrumpton. Her memory is only of the fact that my father talked about the House with a tenderness that touched her heart.

She had just become aware that her family were about to lose their own home. Chirk, which had never belonged to them, was about to be reclaimed, in its newly repaired and improved state, by its owners, the Myddleton family.

Further praise for In My Father’s House: ‘Utterly riveting, ruthlessly honest and strangely touching, this portrait of the author’s extraordinary father both appalled and moved me – and made me laugh out loud’ DEBORAH MOGGACH ‘Miranda Seymour’s wonderful memoir is a kind of posthumous conversation with her father. The ending is particularly powerul. What a gripping, poignant, dramatic, emotionally searing book she has written!’ JOYCE CAROL OATES ‘Few books capture the pain and laughter of upper-class English life as vividly as this one. It is a gem of a memoir and I wish there were others like it’ ALEXANDER WAUGH ‘A brilliantly crafted true story, In My Father’s House gains depth and complexity from its willingness to explore the ethical dilemma of revealing painful family secrets.

There is more to learn about human nature in this short memoir than in many novels two or three times its length’ PAT BARKER ‘A gem of a book – Miranda Seymour’s riveting memoir tells a moving story of family love and hate that manages to be subtle and funny, as well as profoundly surprising in its emotional twists’ RUPERT CHRISTIANSEN ‘Fascinating . . . Charming and candid’ Mail on Sunday ‘Thrillingly odd, yet oh-so-elegant and tasteful, I devoured it in one swift sitting, and have been urging it on my friends, aspirational and otherwise, ever since .

. . The tale Seymour tells is so strange and sad, so sordid and yet touching, that you find yourself caught between wonder that she waited for more than a decade to write it – and wonder that she was able to put pen to paper at all’ RACHEL COOKE, Evening Standard ‘Never anything other than compelling . . . Extremely well crafted and holds the reader’s attention throughout’ LIZA CAMPBELL, Literary Review ‘A rich and entertaining account of the upper classes in the early to mid- twentieth century.

There are endless family tragedies, trysts and twists. Those who loved her last book, The Bugatti Queen, will applaud the return to her clever, light style . . . The detail is thrilling . . . Needless to say, perfect for anyone who’s ever obsessed about a beautiful house in the country’ SEBASTIAN SHAKESPEARE, Tatler ‘This outstanding book is a very funny and very sad portrait . . .

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 7a121a919863edd3
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 22,703,006 bytes (21.651 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• ISBN: 9781471149696
• Pages: 259
• Language: English (en)

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• Estimated Reading Time: 410.18 minutes
• Total Words: 82,035
• Total Characters: 462,981
• Average Words per Page: 316.74
• Average Characters per Page: 1787.57

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