From the author of 'The Bugatti Queen', comes the extraordinary true story of a man whose upper-crust surface belied darker depths and desires, and how his behaviour affected his wife and daughter.
'Dear Thrumpton, how I miss you tonight', wrote George Seymour in 1944, when he was aged twenty-one. The object of his affection was not a young woman, but a beautiful Jacobean country house in Nottinghamshire -- ownership of which was then a distant dream.
It was a dream he pursued with obsession, eventually acquiring Thrumpton. It was in this idyllic home that Miranda Seymour grew up. But her upbringing was far from idyllic, as life revolved around her father's capriciousness. The House took priority, and everything -- and everyone else -- was secondary, even his wife. Miranda soon realised that warmth and tenderness eluded her father -- a casually cruel man who found it easier to lavish affection on bricks and mortar.
Until, that is, the day late on his life when George Seymour took to riding powerful motorbikes around the countryside clad in black leather in the company of a young male friend. Had he taken leave of his senses? Or finally found them? And how did this sea-change affect his wife and daughter?
Both biography and family memoir, 'In My Father's House' is a riveting and ultimately shocking portrait of desire both overt and suppressed, and the devastating consequences of misplaced love. Searingly honest and written with great style and grace, it is a portrait of a lost world, and a lost love.
