Subject

Born 3 Arlington Street. Writer, famed for his collaborations with his sister Edith and brother Sacheverell. He wrote the libretto for Sir William Walton’s oratorio, Belshazzar’s Feast. Died Montegufoni, Florence, Italy.

1928 Osbert Sitwell and Nina Hamnett published The People's Album of London Statues; with Hamnett's drawings and Sitwell's rather bad-tempered commentary. For example, about London's recent development he writes: "Who, then, can wonder that within the last few years our rulers have permitted, and the small nucleus of enlightened opinion has been powerless to prevent, a devastation of London more serous and widespread than the havoc caused by the Great Fire? Though a few of the more sacrilegious proposals, such as the wanton project for pulling down the majority of Wren's city churches have defeated themselves by the obviousness of their own iniquity, we have lived to see London vulgarised and spoilt, securely in the grasp of an architecture totally unsuited to it."