For the past four hundred years, since its purchase in 1605 by Thomas Sackville, 1st Earl of Dorset, the house at Knole, Kent, has been inhabited by fifteen generations of a single aristocratic family, the Sackvilles. Here, drawing on a wealth of unpublished letters, archives and images, the current incumbent of the seat, Robert Sackville-West, paints a vivid and intimate portrait of the vast, labyrinthine house and the close relationships his often colourful ancestors formed with it. Inheritance is the story of a house and its inhabitants, a family described by Vita Sackville-West as 'a race too prodigal, too amorous, too weak, too indolent and too melancholy; a rotten lot, and nearly all stark staring mad'. From Charles, 6th Earl of Dorset, a notorious carouser, minor poet, and friend and patron of John Dryden, to Vita Sackville-West, novelist, biographer and lover of Virginia Woolf, the history of the Sackville dynasty is one of extremes: vast wealth and financial ruin, personal tragedy and triumph, public rioting and cosy family dinners.
Knole is today one of the largest privately-owned houses in England, visited by thousands annually and housing one of the country's finest collections of second-hand Royal furniture. An affectionate celebration of staircases that lead to nowhere-in-particular, it's a pleasure to follow Robert Sackville-West, a knowledgeable and entertaining guide, on this fascinating, masterful, four-hundred-year tour through the memories and memorabilia, political, financial and domestic, of his extraordinary family.