A HOUSE FULL OF DAUGHTERS

“In my family, parents always seem to be escaping when children need them most.” Grand-daughter of Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson, and daughter of their son, Nigel Nicolson, Juliet’s account of seven generations of women from this extraordinary British family is courageously honest and desperately sad. “I wanted to understand these women, be grateful where I should be, forgive them where I could.” In many ways, this insightful book about mothers and daughters is Juliet’s ode to her mother, Philippa. When Nigel wed Philippa, Juliet cites a memoir in which he admitted the acquisition of a wife would do a lot for him in his constituency. Philippa battled the common generational lack of self-worth, maternal jealousy and alcohol addiction. “Most of the time my mother felt unreal to me, floating off, always busy.” Philippa died at 58 from liver damage, at a time when Juliet, now 62, was hopeful she had turned a corner. “The indignity of my mother’s appearance, injured from a fall, was shocking,” she says, also remembering her looking “loveable in her courageous desperation”, when sober.