Sarah
Sackville-West
1960-2022

Sarah Sackville-West’s father and mother moved into Knole House when she was one, the youngest of five daughters. She went first to Miss Grainger’s in Sevenoaks, and to Walthamstow Hall, then, aged 11, soon after her mother died, she went to Bedales School, where she was well prepared for co-education. After O-levels she was one of the seven brave day girls who joined the Sixth Form at Sevenoaks School, where her father, Lord Sackville, was Chairman of Governors. Sarah was determined to go to Oxford in her father’s footsteps; she was very much helped by Richard Hanson, who encouraged her to read widely in English Literature, and she much enjoyed learning to etch and paint with Bob White in the Art Room.

She went to Oxford to read English; at St Peter’s College she was, again, one of the first girls – an unlikely bluestocking. After Oxford she worked briefly in the City of London and wrote a novel. She moved to publishing, reading manuscripts for the literary agent Tessa Sayle, working for Sidgwick & Jackson, and filling a double-page spread every week as literary editor of the Catholic Herald – all at the same time. Then she discovered Andrew Edmunds and his wonderful shop and restaurant in Soho, and helped him catalogue and sell his 18th century caricatures – she became particularly knowledgeable in Hogarth and Gillray.

Through all her time in London she kept a foothold in The Old Laundry Cottage at Knole, and was very pleased to see friends from Sevenoaks School, and to watch over the next generation. She married Simon Rendall in 1992 and devoted the rest of her time to looking after him and their two boys, Freddy and Edward.

Simon Rendall