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Posts Tagged ‘Sissinghurst’

Learning about Vita from her cousin

Posted in events, Orlando, Virginia Woolf, Vita Sackville-West, tagged , , , , on Monday 6 March 2023| Leave a Comment »

If you will be in New York City on March 15, you can learn about Vita Sackville-West from her cousin. Yes, I’m serious.

Sponsored by the Royal Oak Foundation, the first talk in an in-person lecture series will be given by Robert Sackville-West, 7th Baron Sackville on March 15 at 6 p.m. (ET) at 20 W. 44th Street, between 5th and 6th avenues. A reception and book signing will follow the lecture, which is titled “Vita Sackville-West and A Sense of Place.”

Information about the event, which I learned about from a press release, is a bit sketchy. The release did not include any information regarding cost, and the appropriate page on the Royal Oak Foundation website is not updated to include the lecture series focused on Vita. However, I did find this email address, which might be helpful for obtaining more information: lectures@royal-oak.org

About the lecture series

The lecture series will describe Vita Sackville-West’s life and illustrate the places important to Virginia Woolf’s friend and lover.

One of these places was Knole, the 365-room house in which she grew up but which she was not able to inherit due to her sex. Woolf immortalized Vita’s feelings about Knole in her 1928 novel, Orlando.

In his lectures, Sackville-West will discuss Vita’s connections to Knole, as well as Sissinghurst, a nearby castle ruin and tumbledown farm that is considered Vita’s greatest creation and most enduring legacy. Both Knole and Sissinghurst are now owned by Britain’s National Trust.

About Robert Sackville-West

Robert Sackville-West, the 13th generation of the family to live at Knole, studied history at Oxford University and went on to work in publishing. He now chairs Knole Estates, the property and investment company that, in parallel with the National Trust, runs the Sackville family’s interests at Knole.

Knole House, originally built as an archbishop’s palace but given to the Sackville family in 1603.

Rooftop view of Sissinghurst Gardens

 

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Living with tourists, history and the National Trust

Posted in Sissinghurst, Travels with Virginia Woolf, Vita Sackville-West, tagged , , , , on Thursday 17 October 2013| Leave a Comment »

sissinghurst nyt screenshotThe New York Times special fall travel section of Oct. 6 asks the question, “Can a modern family make a home among hordes of tourists under the watchful eye of England’s National Trust?”

Adam Nicolson, provides an answer. He discusses Sissinghurst in Kent, the gardens lovingly created by his grandparents, Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson, and how things went for him, his wife and their two daughters when they moved in to the National Trust “home” in 2004.

It did not go well. The new setup was something of a shock. We had moved into a museum: our dogs not allowed in the garden, being shouted at by gardeners if they did wander in; our children not allowed near the greenhouses; our cars to be parked in exactly prealigned ways; instructions that we were not to have parties on the weekends – Adam Nicolson in the NYT.

Nicolson writes about the struggle to create the “placeness” inherent in the Sissinghurst of his childhood, along with the “fug of beauty” that made the site so memorable.

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