Achievements

• Sitwell’s poetry -- The People’s Palace (1918), The Thirteenth Caesar (1924), The Rio Grande (performed 1929, with music by Constant Lambert), Selected Poems (1948), and other volumes -- written predominantly in traditional metres, reveals in its mannered style the effect of his interest in the arts and music More original are his imaginative and interpretative books, of which the first, Southern Baroque Art (1924), was the forerunner of much academic research. His poetic prose is seen at its best in the “autobiographical fantasia” All Summer in a Day (1926) and the gloomily meditative Splendours and Miseries (1943). He succeeded his brother as the 6th baronet on Osbert’s death in 1969. For Want of the Golden City (1973) is a series of essays on life and art containing a considerable amount of autobiographical material. A noted traveler, Sitwell said in 1982 that, among the most beautiful sites on earth, he judged Venice to be the best, with Angkor Wat in Cambodia in second place.

Works

• book

  • Southern Baroque Art: a Study of Painting, Architecture and Music in Italy and Spain of the 17th & 18th Centuries (1924)

  • German Baroque Art (1927)

  • The Cyder Feast (1927; poems)

  • All At Sea: A Social Tragedy in Three Acts for First-Class Passengers Only (1927) with Osbert Sitwell

  • The Gothick North: a Study of Mediaeval Life, Art, and Thought (1929)

  • Spanish Baroque Art, with Buildings in Portugal, Mexico, and Other Colonies (1931)

  • Mozart (1932)

  • Canons of Giant Art: Twenty Torsos in Heroic Landscapes (1933)

  • Conversation Pieces: a Survey of English Domestic Portraits and their Painters (1936)

  • Dance of the Quick and the Dead (1936)

  • Narrative Pictures: a Survey of English Genre and its Painters (1938)

  • German Baroque Sculpture (1938)

  • Roumanian Journey (1938)

  • The Romantic Ballet (1938) with C. W. Beaumont

  • Old Fashioned Flowers (1939)

  • Poltergeists: An Introduction and Examination Followed By Chosen Instances (1940)

  • The Homing of the Winds: and other passages in prose. Faber & Faber, London (1942)

  • Primitive Scenes and Festivals Faber & Faber, London (1942)

  • The Hunters and the Hunted (1948)

  • The Netherlands; A Study of Some Aspects of Art, Costume and Social Life (1948)

  • Tropical Birds (1948)

  • Spain (1950)

  • Cupid and the Jacaranda (1952)

  • Fine Bird Books (1953) with Handasyde Buchanan and James Fisher

  • Liszt (1955)

  • Denmark (1956)

  • Arabesque & Honeycomb (1957)

  • Journey to the Ends of Time, etc (1959)

  • British Architects & Craftsmen: survey taste, design, styles 1600-1830 (1960)

  • Golden Wall and Mirador: Travels and Observations in Peru (1961)

  • Great Houses of Europe (1964)

  • Monks, Nuns and Monasteries (1965)

  • Southern Baroque Revisited (1967)

  • Gothic Europe (1969)

  • A Background for Domenico Scarlatti, 1685-1757: Written for His Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary (1970)

  • Tropicalia (1971; poems)

  • Agamemnon's Tomb (1972; poems)

  • For Want of the Golden City (1973)

  • Battles of the Centaurs (1973)

  • Les Troyens (1973)

  • Look at Sowerby's English Mushrooms and Fungi (1974)

  • A Notebook on My New Poems (1974)

  • All Summer in a Day : An Autobiographical Fantasia (1976)

  • Placebo (1977)

  • Hortus Sitwellianus (1984) with Meriel Edmunds and George Reresby Sitwell

  • Sacheverell Sitwell's England (1986) edited by Michael Raeburn

• poem

  • The People's Palace (1918; poems)

  • The Hundred and One Harlequins (1922; poems)

  • The Thirteenth Caesar (1924; poems; contains The Rio Grande, the basis of Constant Lambert's The Rio Grande)

  • Doctor Donne and Gargantua (1930) poems

  • Selected Poems (1948)

  • An Indian Summer: 100 recent poems (1982; poems)

Connections

Father:

Sir George Sitwell, 4th Baronet

Mother:

Lady Ida Sitwell (socialite)

Brother:

Sir Osbert Sitwell (poet, b. 6-Dec-1892, d. 4-May-1969)

Sister:

Edith Sitwell