Sir Osbert Sitwell

1 portrait of Sir Osbert Sitwell

© Lewis Morley Archive/ The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum, London

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Sir Osbert Sitwell

by Lewis Morley
bromide fibre print, 1963
9 7/8 in. x 8 1/8 in. (250 mm x 207 mm)
Given by Lewis Morley, 1994
Photographs Collection
NPG x47400

Sitterback to top

Artistback to top

  • Lewis Morley (1925-2013), Photographer. Artist or producer of 308 portraits, Sitter in 5 portraits.

Related worksback to top

  • NPG x46598: Sir Osbert Sitwell (from same photo shoot)
  • NPG x46599: Sir Osbert Sitwell (from same photo shoot)

Linked publicationsback to top

  • Clerk, Honor, The Sitwells, 1994 (accompanying the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery from 14 October - 22 January 1995), p. 191 Read entry

    By March 1963 the lease on 2 Carlyle Square ran out but the resourceful Lorna Andrade found a new London home for Osbert and David Horner in York House, a block of flats off Kensington Church Street. David Horner hated it; the Daily Telegraph described it as 'small and soulless'; but it had eight good-sized, light rooms. While the new flat was made ready Osbert and David stayed at the Ritz. ‘The operation of removing', Osbert wrote, typically capitalising on an uncomfortable experience by writing an essay on it, ‘took not less than ten days, by which time I was so muddled that I nearly got removed myself.’1 The departure from Carlyle Square was the end of an era noted not only in Osbert's immediate circle but in wider terms too, inducing the Tatler to commission an article from Ronald Blythe with photographs by Lewis Morley. Though Blythe regretted the loss of Carlyle Square, 'for 44 years the hub of a celebrated baroque creativity, the urbane H.Q. for many a Sitwellian raid on the Philistine camp’, he wrote of ‘the luminous feeling of this spacious flat' and the 'exciting clarity'2 that the bright rooms gave to Osbert's collection. Morley's less anodyne account of the visit was published long after Osbert's death. ‘Although large and airy, the flat had already acquired a cocooned quality, reminiscent of a fly in amber. Although there were no cobwebs, there was a musty, unlived-in order. Not unoccupied, but unlived. One existed in this atmosphere, one did not participate. It was a sanitised Miss Havisham house and I sensed a miasma of emotions, both angry and sad.'3 It was a perceptive observation, as relations had become increasingly strained since Frank Magro had moved in. 'Sir Osbert was wheeled into the large room by David Horner [whose arm was still in a sling after the fall at Montegufoni the previous year]. He was dressed in varying shades of grey, slumped in his wheelchair, grasping his cane and apparently oblivious to all around him.'4 Morley describes how Osbert asked to be hauled up from his chair and proceeded, with thoughtful courtesy, to show the photographer around his collection. In the photograph of David Horner, Nevinson's From an Office Window and Dan Maloney's The Sitwells are visible on the wall above the Chinese gilded flowers in blue glass vases that had been photographed at Carlyle Square forty years earlier. Though Osbert was to spend only a few months at York House, David Horner took over the lease of the flat in 1965 and lived there until his death in 1983.

    1 Osbert Sitwell, ‘Moving House’ in Queen Mary and Others, 1974, p 165.

    2 Tatler, 20.11.1963

    3 L. Morley, Black and White Lies, 1992, pp 192-5.

    4 Ibid.

Placesback to top

Events of 1963back to top

Current affairs

The Secretary of State for War, John Profumo is found to have lied to the House of Commons when he denied having an affair with the showgirl, Christine Keeler. The Profumo Affair was a public scandal for the Conservative party, and ultimately contributed to the resignation of Harold Macmillan.

Art and science

Doctor Who is first broadcast on the BBC with William Hartnell playing the Doctor. This long running science fiction series about an alien Time Lord who travels through time and space in his police-box-shaped Tardis has been watched by generations of viewers (often from behind the back of the sofa), and features imaginative, but traditionally low-budget, special effects, innovative electronic music, and the Doctor's greatest enemy, the Daleks.

International

John F. Kennedy is assassinated in Texas. The arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald for his murder did not prevent a score of conspiracy theories involving Cuba, the CIA, the KGB, and the Mafia among others.
Martin Luther King delivers his 'I have a dream' speech, marking an important moment in the civil rights movement in America and helping to secure him the Nobel Peace Prize' in 1964.

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