Word: osbert
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Britain's famous libel laws are hard on critics, fun for artists. Britain's famous Sitwells love fun. Last month, between bombs, they had their fun in court. The Three Sitwells are not an acrobatic act. They are Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell, the fractious, fastidious scions of Sir George Reresby Sitwell, fourth Baronet, Lord of the Manor of Long Itchington. Osbert is a poet, essayist, novelist (Before the Bombardment, Escape With Me). Sacheverell is an outstanding authority on baroque art and Liszt, author of a distinguished travel book (Roumanian Journey) and much verse. Edith usually dresses like...
Edith Sitwell (by her own proclamation) has no sense of humor. But all the Sitwells are prankish as hippogriffs. Osbert's impish autobiographical notes in Who's Who are said to freeze the other Sitwells into stoney stares of amusement. All three delight in caressing authors and critics they do not like with their individual or corporate paws. Edith once called a poem of John Masefield's "dead mutton" and Poet Cecil Day Lewis "an electric drill with the electricity left out." She and Osbert presented prizes to "the authors most representative of the tedious literature...
ESCAPE WITH ME-An Oriental Sketch Book-Osbert Sltwell-Harrison-Hilton ($3). For the first 50 pages, readers may squirm at Osbert Sitwell's mannerisms (which include frequent use of the word "alas"). For the remaining 265 pages they may enjoy his style, which is elaborate, delicately colorful, at times moving. His impressions of Angkor Wat in French IndoChina and the Forbidden City in Peking have an atmosphere such as might now be found in the report of a traveler of the Fifth Century A. D. who first examined the ruins of Babylon and then went on to live...
...least remarkable feature of the volume was that Edith Sitwell should have written it. The oldest member of an industrious literary family that includes Osbert (Before the Bombardment, Miracle on Sinai) and Sacheverell (Doctor Donne and Gargantua, All Slimmer in a Day), she has previously been best known for her calm, highbrow aloofness, her volumes of verse, her idiosyncratic individualism, her interest in famed British eccentrics, her biography of Alexander Pope. Now 49, she is tall (over 6 ft.), blonde, unmarried, with straight classic features. Readers who know her previous books will be surprised at the interest in social conditions...
...cost. Although Sitwell and Barton write long and authoritatively on the beauties of the romantic architecture he sponsored, a taint of snobbishness and affectation is discernible in their accounts. Despite Brighton and its patron's love of art, Thackeray was probably more nearly right about George IV than Osbert Sitwell and Margaret Barton...