A House Full of Daughters

One woman’s investigation into the nature of memory, the past, and above all, love

Shocking and brave... Nicolson's anger, tenderness and insight have resulted in an exceptionally moving book

I couldn't put it down... Enthralling, touching and beautifully written

Original and illuminating… A House Full of Daughters gallops through seven generations with confidence and ease: it is funny in parts, painful in others but always honest.

Tense, highly personal and beautifully written... A powerful and moving family portrait

Candid, poignant, well-written and wonderfully life-affirming

The most enjoyable book to take on holiday would undoubtedly be Juliet Nicolson’s A House Full of Daughters . It combines history with memoir in a way that both historians and memoirists should envy

In prose that is lyrical and sometimes self-lacerating, she anatomises the failures of love and attention, none the less destructive for being inadvertent, from which these husbands, wives, parents and children, suffered so acutely … Lent grace by Nicolson’s lustrous prose, and by the redemptive hope that love and forgiveness will free the latest generations from the baleful patterns of the past.

A marvelous writer, with a wonderful eye for detail

Nicolson’s aim in her meditative contribution to Nicolson studies is not so much to chronicle…as to search for patterns in the intergenerational weave… A fascinating social document.

Surprisingly affecting... impressively understated... remarkably sad

This is a book about how a family survives emotional dramas and difficulties down the generations, and at what cost... Not long ago such difficulties used not to be spoken, much less written about; Nigel Nicolson himself, in 1974, took one of the first steps in breaking that taboo… His daughter now takes honesty about family matters much further. In writing this highly entertaining account, she shows exceptional emotional resilience

Brilliant, incisive exploration of seven generations of women… A riveting read… This is an elegantly written meditation on family, identity and the impact of the past.

In historian Juliet Nicolson's story of seven generations of her family, it's refreshing to find the women take centre stage... for so many generations, the birth of a daughter was a disappointment, but Nicolson redresses the balance

This is Juliet Nicolson's own truth, courageously shared

This is the mesmerising, seven-generations saga of the strong women in Juliet Nicolson’s family

Alongside vivid portraits of Pepita, Victoria and Vita, Nicolson delivers a magnificently clear-eyed view of her mother… Lovely, elegant book, painstakingly unsentimental.

She examines the pride, passion, resentment, emotional neglect, addiction and loss, and recognizes them in her own life... a treat

Few writers can boast such a literary heritage as Juliet Nicolson, granddaughter of Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson, who turns her astute historian’s eye onto her own family history.

An engaging history-cum-memoir… Strongest when exploring the tender relationship between Nicolson and her father after her mother’s death as a result of alcoholism, her own struggles with the same condition, the knife-twist of grief when one loses a parent, and the emotional rush of motherhood.

I would recommend everyone to read this book

Juliet Nicolson is firing on all cylinders ... She is able to write about powerful emotion in a way that is both heartfelt and unselfconscious ... It makes the book perfectly personal as well as a fascinating history

This book is a marvellous illustration of the often forgotten fact that people in history were real, with real ambition, real passion and real rage. All these women took life by the throat and shook it. It’s a wonderful read, and a powerful reminder of the significance of our matrilineal descent

Juliet Nicolson's book will engage the hearts and minds of daughters and sons everywhere. She has turned my attention to much in my life, and I am full of admiration for her clarity and gentleness

I loved A House Full of Daughters. I was initially intrigued, then gripped, and then when she began writing about herself, deeply moved and admiring of the way in which she charted her own journey. An illuminating book in which she charts the inevitability of family life and the damage and gifts that we inherit from the previous generations

A fascinating, beautifully written, brutally honest family memoir. I was riveted. This is a book to read long into the night

I was riveted... She is so astute about mother/daughter relationships and the tenderness of fathers and daughters. She deeply understands the way problems pass down through generations... I congratulate her on her fierce understanding.

Juliet Nicolson’s writing is so confident and assured. She combines the magic of a novelist with the rigour of a historian, and the result is thrilling and seriously powerful

Once I started it was impossible to stop. I was totally absorbed by Juliet Nicolson's large-souled approach to family memoir down the generations, drawing the reader into lives that reverberate with achievement and suffering... movingly original

A moving and very revealing account of seven generations of strong and yet curiously vulnerable mothers and daughters

An outstanding book about a gifted, unconventional family told through the female line. Insightful, painfully honest, beautifully written and full of love, wisdom, compassion, loss, betrayal and self-doubt. A House Full of Daughters will resonate down the years for all who read it

An engaging memoir in which Nicolson lays bare discoveries about herself, but also gives a fascinating inside take on her renowned, and already much scrutinized, forebears. She also has much that is thought-provoking to say about mothers and daughters, marriage and the way in which damaging patterns can repeat down generations.

Nicolson is perceptive on difficult mother-daughter relationships.

A fascinating personal look at family, the past and love.

Beautifully written history… She has as easy and elegant a style as her many writer relations, so this book is seductively readable. It could be described as a late addition to the ‘Bloomsbury’ shelves, but that should not put off anyone who feels enough has been said about that particular group. I found it touching and fascinating. In admitting that Nigel Nicolson was a friend, I can say with confidence that he would have been painfully proud of his daughter’s candid confession.

Nicolson has written a poignant and courageous history.

The most enjoyable book to take on holiday would undoubtedly be Juliet Nicolson’s A House Full of Daughters… It is ideal holiday reading.

A simple premise looking at seven generations of women in one family, but it's got all the juicy bits of several novels in one

An entrancing book… A poignant, well-written memoir-cum-social history

This engrossing book charts seven generations of a family who were obsessive documenters of their lives through diaries, letters, memoirs and autobiographical novels… Interwoven with the personal is a portrait of society’s changing expectations of women, and the struggle to break free from patriarchy. Here, brilliantly laid bare, are both the trials of being a daughter and of documenting daughterhood in all its complexity.

A charming book about the female side of Nicolson’s family tree.

Juliet Nicolson is the bestselling author of three works of history, The Great Silence: 1918-1920 Living in the Shadow of the Great War; The Perfect Summer: Dancing into Shadow in 1911; and Frostquake: The frozen winter of 1962 and how Britain emerged a different country; as well as a family memoir, A House Full of Daughters. She is a mother and a grandmother and lives with her husband in East Sussex.

One woman’s investigation into the nature of memory, the past, and above all, love. 
 
All families have their myths and Juliet Nicolson’s was no different: her flamenco dancing great-great-grandmother Pepita, the flirty manipulation of her great-grandmother Victoria, the infamous eccentricity of her grandmother Vita, her mother’s Tory-conventional background. 
 
A House Full of Daughters takes us through seven generations of women. In the nineteenth-century slums of Malaga, the salons of fin-de-siècle Washington DC, an English boarding school during the Second World War, Chelsea in the 1960s, these women emerge for Juliet as people in their own right, but also as part of who she is and where she has come from

Women and Their Secrets

The Book of Revelations

A book about the stories we don’t tell, written with such truth-telling compulsion and compassionate honesty that I was riveted by every single page. Juliet Nicolson writes beautifully about the constraints, pains and joys of womanhood and her clear-sightedness when she reveals the secrets in her own life is a true act of bravery and sisterhood

An amazing achievement - teeming with life, vivid history rolling alongside personal stories. It has a thrilling energy, and the great release and relief of telling the truth and being heard. A precious testament to sisterhood and trust

Hannah Dawson, editor of The Penguin Book of Feminist Writing

A triumph – shocking, brave, compellingly readable and of clear importance

'I was riveted by every single page' ELIZABETH DAY 
 
How have secrets changed over the generations, and what does that tell us about ourselves and our world? In her beautifully written, intimate new book, bestselling social historian Juliet Nicolson uncovers one of the most enigmatic yet revealing aspects of human behaviour. 
 
According to a leading American psychotherapist most of us are keeping thirteen secrets at any one time. Secrets can thrill, but they are just as likely to torment; and the deepest ones echo far down the generations. 
 
The secrets we keep inside reflect the conventions and taboos of the world outside. As women traditionally sit at the heart of family life, their secrets can open a unique window onto wider society. The Book of Revelations unlocks a period of significant transformation for women, from the restrictions just after the Second World War, through the emancipation of the 1960s and 1970s, to the opportunities and dangers women meet online today. 
 
As we travel through time, we encounter deeply moving first-person stories, rich social history and Juliet’s own experiences of secrecy. We witness long-buried family secrets shared at last, their keepers set free. Finally, we are forced to wonder whether, after a steady upwards curve of liberation, our daughters and granddaughters are once again in danger of being curtailed by censure, caution and fear. Or will they learn from the secrets of the past, to find a more secure footing for the future? 
 
‘An amazing achievement – teeming with life, vivid history rolling alongside personal stories. It has a thrilling energy, and the great release and relief of telling the truth and being heard. A precious testament to sisterhood and trust’ Hannah Dawson, editor of The Penguin Book of Feminist Writing

Juliet Nicolson

Nicolson makes social history feel like reading the best and most gripping novel. A beautiful, wholly original book

A brilliant concept transformed into a brilliant and revelatory book. Completely fascinating and engrossing

As gripping as any thriller, Frostquake is the story of a national trauma that came out of nowhere and changed us forever. Brilliantly written and almost eerily relevant to our current troubles

An engagingly written mixture of social history and memoir

Fascinating, quirky and evocative . . . Nicolson takes us right back to that muffled, snowbound world

An entertaining panorama of life in Britain during the original "beast from the east" . . .  [Nicolson's] striking hypothesis . . . explores the impending social revolution from many angles . . . out of catastrophe can come change for good: a social revolution in 1963; perhaps an environmental awakening in 2021

Juliet Nicolson's new book is a treasure trove... beautifully written. Nicolson uses the imagery of freeze and thaw as a metaphor for the new Britain that was being born, a conceit as elegant in its execution in its conception

Juliet Nicolson's timely study of that pivotal winter in British history has so many parallels with today that it occasionally sends a shiver down your spine . . .  Her own memories of the turbulent months before and after that day are the thread that hold this beautifully stitched patchwork of stories together . . . convincing, poetic and often very touching

In this lively chronicle Juliet Nicolson, who was eight years old at the time, argues that the winter of 1962-63 marked a turning point in society, with Britain's social conventions beginning to burst apart at the seams. With cameos from Joanna Lumley and Harold Evans, and a nod to imminent Beatlemania, Nicolson buoyantly contends that out of devastation good can come

Nicolson aims to do much more than present a charming word picture of the freakish winter of 1962-63 . . . where Frostquake triumphs is as a metaphor -- a network of images that describes how Britain was beginning to unfreeze from the 50s

She imaginatively uses that ten-week freeze to highlight many of Britain's then moribund laws and attitudes and their imminent collapse . . . Nicolson's writing is energetic and absorbing. By accumulating tiny details she brings a multitude of scenes to life. I thought I knew enough about Sylvia Plath, but the description of her lonely last days with two infant children, in freezing weather in her rental near London Zoo, is heartrending

Cutting deftly from ordinary lives to extraordinary ones, the author vividly evokes a time of almost molten change and innovation

Juliet Nicolson has done something incredibly clever in her book Frostquake. She has written living history. It is stunning

A fascinating description of Britain in the cold, hard winter of 1962 and early 1963, when it started to snow on Boxing Day and didn't stop for 10 weeks

Frostquake is wholly remarkable . . . a rare and engrossing read that brought that time straight back to my memory and consciousness

The freezing winter of 1962-63 finally thawed in early March and as if on cue British society and politics became molten and mobile. Those who lived through it will never forget it. Those who didn't, need to know about it. Juliet Nicolson is brilliant at recapturing mood, moment and character. It's as if the inhabitants of that extraordinary time have flung open the door and welcomed her in from the blizzard outside to tell her all. This book is a must

I was absolutely enthralled from first page to last.  It's truly remarkable, so well written, and the scope of her research is extraordinary.  I particularly admire the way she entwines her own family's experience with what was going on at the time - a very vivid, accurate and perceptive portrayal of the period at all social, political and cultural levels

I loved this  beautifully written account of one icy winter during  the 1960s in which familiar stories of pop music and politics surprised me thanks to Juliet Nicolson's  brilliant research. These events interwoven with Nicolson as an eight year old child and her relationship with her widowed grandfather and her younger brother highlighting how early experiences live on in us forever, make this a deeply moving and original book

Julia Samuel, psychotherapist and bestselling author of Grief Works

The bitter winter of 1962-3 closed down life for Britain just as Covid is doing today. Juliet Nicolson was a child then and is a scintillating storyteller now. There is not an icicle, politician, scandal or song missing from this engrossing re-creation of times so recently passed. Enchanting and wise, it leaves this message for our future: they survived, and so shall we

This is an absolutely mesmerising book. Where I knew of the events concerned I was fascinated by the vivid retelling, and when I didn't I was utterly gripped

Works fizzingly well on all its many different levels . . . the unity between the national crisis and the family story never falters. The sensuous delight Juliet Nicolson takes in the natural world makes the snow both villain and star of Frostquake

In 1962 East Sussex snowdrifts reached 23ft and in London milkmen made deliveries on skis. The experience shaped the Britain of the 1960s, argues Nicolson in this lively social history

The Times (Books to Look Out for in 2021)

A micro-history of that extraordinarily cold winter, which, she [Nicolson] argues, changed Britain forever

Juliet Nicolson's Frostquake is a micro-history of that extraordinarily cold winter, which, she argues, changed Britain forever. Nicolson is a warm guide to that freezing time, weaving together memories of her childhood at Sissinghurst, the nascent Chelsea set scene on the Kings Road, global politics and the Profumo affair

[An] enthralling account of the horrendous winter of 1962/3

How the frozen winter of 1962 changed Britain forever

** THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER ** 
 
'This book is a must' Peter Hennessy 
 
On Boxing Day 1962, when Juliet Nicolson was eight years old, the snow began to fall. It did not stop for ten weeks. 
 
The threat of nuclear war had reached its terrifying height with the recent Cuban Missile Crisis, unemployment was on the rise, and yet, underneath the frozen surface, new life was beginning to stir. 
 
From poets to pop stars, shopkeepers to schoolchildren, and her own family's experiences, Juliet Nicolson traces the hardship of that frozen winter and the emancipation that followed. That spring, new life was unleashed, along with freedoms we take for granted today. 
 
'An absolutely mesmerising book' Antonia Fraser

Juliet Nicolson

Praise for Frostquake

Nicolson makes social history feel like reading the best and most gripping novel. A beautiful, wholly original book

A brilliant concept transformed into a brilliant and revelatory book. Completely fascinating and engrossing

As gripping as any thriller, Frostquake is the story of a national trauma that came out of nowhere and changed us forever. Brilliantly written and almost eerily relevant to our current troubles

Nicolson makes social history feel like reading the best and most gripping novel. A beautiful, wholly original book

A brilliant concept transformed into a brilliant and revelatory book. Completely fascinating and engrossing

As gripping as any thriller, Frostquake is the story of a national trauma that came out of nowhere and changed us forever. Brilliantly written and almost eerily relevant to our current troubles

Nicolson makes social history feel like reading the best and most gripping novel. A beautiful, wholly original book

A brilliant concept transformed into a brilliant and revelatory book. Completely fascinating and engrossing

As gripping as any thriller, Frostquake is the story of a national trauma that came out of nowhere and changed us forever. Brilliantly written and almost eerily relevant to our current troubles

Books by Juliet Nicolson

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