Having written about Mary Shelley, Robert Graves, Henry James and Ottoline Morrell, Miranda Seymour has now turned her biographical skills onto her own family. Her childhood memoir, the biblically titled In My Father’s House, focuses on her father, George Fitzroy Seymour, and his obsession with their family home, Thrumpton. 

Seymour grew to dislike her father very quickly. As a small child, she prayed deep into her pillow that he would die. George Seymour is described as finicky, horribly precious, vain, and snobbish. The author’s grievances against her father comprise countless small cruelties: George called his daughter ‘big’, begged her