Sacheverell Sitwell – författare

'The genius of English architecture is the glory of England, second only to the printed word.'Thus Sacheverell Sitwell (younger brother of Edith and Osbert Sitwell) concludes British Architects and Craftsmen, an absorbing survey of taste, design, and style from 1600 to 1830, first published to great critical acclaim in 1945. By including not only Sir Christopher Wren, Sir John Vanbrugh, William Kent and other great English architects, but also the craftsmen - the clockmakers, the silversmiths, the bookbinders, and the weavers of tapestry - he gives a remarkable and complete picture of this period.Sitwell recalls the period with vivid and penetrating insight. Now recognised as a classic, considered by many to be the finest of Sitwell's books about art history - and with over two hundred illustrations drawn from photographs, prints and drawings - this is an essential book for all architects and lovers of fine buildings.

A narrative of his time in Denmark, this work is largely concerned with the topography of the country, telling the intending visitor about all those features of the country's buildings, landscape and people which are most characteristic and best worth seeing.First published in 1956, this is a comprehensive study on Denmark, including the history and culture. To read a travel book by this author is to visit a country with a new pair of eyes.

In this book Mr. Sacheverell Sitwell, looking at the Netherlands through his own eyes rather than through those of his many predecessors, has produced a pic­ture of the country which may appear un­orthodox only because of its unfamiliarity. In his belief Holland, as a country, is as individual as Russia or as Spain, and there is a great deal more to be seen and enjoyed in it than the picture galleries, windmills, canals, flower markets and bare empty churches which seem to have impressed previous writers.It has been Mr. Sitwell's endeavour to get out of the museums and into the open-air-out of the museums and, likewise, away from the great cities (although not without having entered some of the old and forgotten patrician houses of The Hague and Amsterdam).In this way the author has discovered a new and beautiful Holland in which the architecture of the eighteenth century, the strange villages and costumes of Friesland, or the art of a Daniel Marot and a Cornelis Troost are taken as truly representative of this at once phlegmatic and poetical people and the man-made wonders of their largely artificial country. The result is a book both to awaken curiosity and, so far as a book may do so, to satisfy it-more especially as the very numerous photographs go side by side with the text and illustrate it at almost every point.If the traditionally pic­turesque and quaint appear as seldom among these illustrations as they do in the text the intelligent reader is presented all the more with a picture of a country whose proximity and unfamiliarity will form added inducements to a visit.

'At the first mention of going to Roumania, a great many people, as I did myself, would take down their atlas and open the map. For Roumania, there can be no question, is among the lesser known lands of Europe.'So begins Sir Sacheverell Sitwell's account of his Roumanian journey, made in the 1930s, when Bucharest was still eight days overland from London.His four-week trip brings him into contact with longhaired gypsies at country fairs as well as the aristocracy in their medieval castles. The natural richness and variety of the landscape-from Transylvania to the Wallachian plains, the Carpathian peaks to the Danube Delta-delight him, as does the diversity of humanity he encounters, while his deep knowledge of European art and architecture makes him the ideal guide to the paintings, frescos, and buildings of Roumania.It is impossible, of course, to read of Roumania in the 1930s without thinking of what lay ahead for that country, but the abiding impression left by the book is of the freshness of Sitwell's perceptions and his unquenchable curiosity in everything he saw.

A concise and beautifully evocative appreciation of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s career and genius by the famed writer and poet Sacheverell Sitwell.From Mozart’s first precocious attempts at composing at the age of four or five, through to his tragic death at the age of just 35, Sitwell traces this most famous of composers’ life with depth and humanity. Exploring Mozart's genius in minute and effusive detail, he expounds on everything from The Marriage of Figaro to the Requiem in beautiful prose.Sitwell’s friendships with the great composers and musicians of the early twentieth century - and his innate understanding of the physical and social settings that Mozart composed for - make this a truly unique biography that is yet to be superseded.

In this classic work on music biography, Sacheverell Sitwell narrates Franz Liszt’s rapid ascent to European fame - and the effect that this incredible early success as a wonderfully gifted pianist had on his later life - with insight, sympathy and humanity, One of the very first studies of Liszt to be published in English, this remarkable biography uses the full force of Sitwell's poetic talent to bring this brilliant and difficult man’s world vividly to life, and captures the artistic mood of the era in extraordinary detail.Perceptive, engaging and full of personality, Liszt rightfully takes its place as one of the most important accounts of its subject's life.