Osbert Sitwell earlier dealt exhaustively with all his relatives in his autobiography Left Hand, Right Hand! Tales My Father Taught Me is an afterpiece entirely devoted to his father.

Sir George Reresby Sitwell had no Napoleonic dreams; he was much too pleased with himself as he was. His passion was for messing about with the landscape of his native Derbyshire, creating grandiose gardens, installing great sheets of water, commanding elegant distant views. ".Such a mistake," he told Osbert, "to have friends: they waste one's time." Not wasting his own. Sir George did voluminous research on "The Correct Use of Seaweed as an Article of Diet," worked on a walking stick designed to squirt vitriol at mad dogs, planned an illustrated pamphlet entitled The Twenty-seven Postures of Sir George R. Sitwell. Projects like these ran in the family. A Sitwell kinsman went to the trouble of having his coat of arms carefully inscribed on his food.