explained the background to the poem in some detail because he recognised that the long delay in publication would result in many readers being unfamiliar with the characters. The book also contains a foreword by John Pearson, explaining some of the background to the publication of the book. Autobiography In 1943 he started an autobiography that ran to four volumes: Left Hand, Right Hand (1943), The Scarlet Tree (1946), Great Morning (1948) and Laughter in the Next Room (1949).The first volume includes a chapter on "The Sargent Group" a humorous account of John Singer Sargent's group portrait of the Sitwells (Sitwell family), and the adjustments that Sargent made to Edith's and her father's noses. Writing in The Adelphi, George Orwell declared that, "although the range they cover is narrow, [they] must be among the best autobiographies of our time." Sitwell's autobiography was followed by a collection of essays about various people he had known, Noble Essences: A Book of Characters (1950), and a postscript, Tales my Father Taught Me (1962). The sometimes acidic diarist James Agate commented on Sitwell after a drinking session on 3 June 1932, in Ego, volume 1, "There is something self-satisfied and having-to-do-with-the-Bourbons about him which is annoying, though there is also something of the crowned-head consciousness which is disarming." In Who's Who, he summed up his career: "For the past 30 years has conducted, in conjunction with his brother and sister, a series of skirmishes and hand-to-hand battles against the Philistine. Though outnumbered, has occasionally succeeded in denting the line, though not without damage to himself." Honours Sitwell was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1956 and a Companion of Honour (CH) in 1958. Baronetcy After Sitwell's father died, in 1943, Osbert succeeded to the baronetcy. Death Sitwell suffered from Parkinson's disease from the 1950s; by the mid-1960s his condition had become so severe that he had to abandon writing. He died on 4 May 1969 in Italy, at Montegufoni, a castle near Florence which his father had bought derelict in 1909 and restored as his personal residence. The castle was left to his nephew, Reresby; his money was left to his brother Sacheverell. Sitwell was cremated and his ashes buried in the Cimitero Evangelico degli Allori in Florence, together with a copy of his first novel, Before the Bombardment. Gallery of Montegufoni Select bibliography Triple Fugue (stories) (1924)