First published in 1931, Three Houses looks back
on the author's childhood living in three different places. The first is The Grange, where her grandfather, the artist
Sir Edward Burne-Jones, set the tone for artistic movements of the late Victorian era. The second and third homes are
Thirkell's parents' home in Kensington Square and the Burne-Jones' seaside retreat on the coast, where Angela's cousin Rudyard
Kipling lived across the green in a house in Rottingdean before moving to his more well-known abode at Bateman's.
Given Thirkell's background, the reminiscence contains a fair amount of name-dropping:
we learn of the visits of fellow-artists Millais, and how they reacted to the young Angela. But Thirkell also had the
ability to conjure up the feeling of a place: although opulent, the family houses were sometimes forbidding places, especially
for someone growing up in them under the shadow of a celebrated relative. On the other hand Thirkell captures the innocence
of a Victorian childhood; houses were places of discovery, both imaginative and social. From the book we discover the
influences that shaped the novelist's later work.
Sian Thomas's reading was lyrical yet clear-headed, communicating to listeners the
author's pleasure in looking back at her early life, yet never ignoring the unsavoury elements.
