If you are female, then you’re a daughter. Of course you might also be a sister, wife, mother, aunt, niece, grandmother or mistress, but you have to be a daughter. No escape. This seems to be the notion behind the title of a book that dwells on the lives of seven generations of the lonely daughters of the House of Sackville-West. Though not quite as scary as the House of Usher, nor as formidable as the House of Windsor, they are and were inveterate chroniclers of their own histories.

Juliet Nicolson is the daughter of Nigel Nicolson, son of Vita Sackville-West, who was in turn the daughter of Victoria, whose mother was Pepita, a famous Spanish ­flamenco dancer. Upon Juliet, the generational fulcrum balances: she is the mother of two daughters and she has a baby granddaughter.  Towards the end of her family memoir, she expresses the hope that this beloved child might learn from the mistakes of the past and make up her mind not to repeat them. “I realise”, she writes, “that is possibly the entire point of this book.”