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‘An unusually entertaining, instructive and engaging book… this book is a treat.’ Sunday Telegraph
‘A meticulously researched labour of love.’ Daily Mail
‘Romantic, accessible and absorbing…I cared passionately for every one of these people and wanted the book to continue indefinitely.’ Daily Telegraph
‘Witty, absorbing and touching…a splendid book.’ Sunday Times
Sunday Telegraph
"an unusually entertaining, instructive and engaging book ... this book is a treat"
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This was a book recommended to me, and I must say I could not put it down once I had started. The author goes into quite minute details of family life in the Big House, which includes not just the day to day happenings but all their staff and some of the villagers too. A great social history of the times.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is the worst kind of family memoir. The kind that was parodied 70 years ago by the Lady Addle books of Mary Dunn. Sykes is far too partisan in his approach to his family and too free with his unsubstantiated value judgments. The awful Jessie or Jessica - Sykes is not consistent - is subject to near adulation regardless of whatever monstrous act she commits - serial adultery, forgery, moral blackmail, near financial ruin of the entire family. All this is blamed on her husband because he is boring and would not go to enough parties with her. He is constantly condemned although appearing to have suffered an abusive childhood at the hands of another of Sykes's family idols. Other characters are so blandly eulogized as to make them incredibly boring and one dimensional while there is too much that appears to be based on unsubstantiated family gossip of the most banal kind. This is where the Lady Addle connection comes in. There is obviously a different story to be told of this family, one that is hinted at and which the reader can grasp at but which Sykes is to blinkered or obtuse to see. Also although it is called The Big House there is really too little about the house or the household and many of the wives and daughters get very short shrift, also evidenced by the less-than-exhaustive family tree at the beginning of the book. The book is also marred by more than its fair share of typos and omissions. Overall this family comes across as wealthy but boring and self serving; all its dramas are petty and have no impact on the wider world. Its members show no intellectual merit nor do they undertake any great services for their nation. The reader is left wondering what the point of this book is other to aggrandize the author and his family.
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