A SILVER-PLATED SPOON

by Duke of Bedford John ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

None of the more obvious showmanship which the 13th Duke of Bedford used to convert his ancestral home, Woburn Abbey, into a successful tourist venture (in order to keep it up and keep it in the family) is applied to this memoir. It is a fairly quiet and modest account, a thoroughly agreeable one, and it has quite a fascinating story to tell. While beginning at the beginning- with the first Earl of Bedford, 1486, and giving the highspots of the succession, the first portrait of particular interest is that of his grandfather who had an income of over 200,000 pounds a year, kept eight chauffeurs, refused to have heating installed, but kept the floors washed in beer (while sacking the footman who sipped from the bucket). His grandmother became a pilot at the age of 64; and his father, an only child, was definitely an odd bird, a social reformer who took very little interest in his son- or his wife- and put him in a Bloomsbury boarding house at 19 to live on 98 pounds a year. Disinherited on the occasion of his first, happy marriage, the Duke worked- as an estate agent- as a reporter for Beaverbrook- and finally as a farmer in South Africa, until he inherited the 4(apple) million pound estate with a tremendous tax liability. With a second wife (his first suicided), five children to support, and a determination to retain Woburn Abbey- he opened it up to the tourist traffic (even made available a site for nudists in the park) and has made a success of it- along with the family life of which he himself was so deprived as a boy... The anachronism of living like a lord in a society which makes no provision for it, the splendor of Woburn Abbey and its collection of great paintings, Sevres, jewels, the splash here and there of great names, all this provides entertainment with a definite cachet and curiosity interest.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1959

Categories: NONFICTION