John Julius Norwich, 81, 2nd Viscount Norwich, is the son of the statesman and diplomat, Duff Cooper and the Lady Diana Cooper. After serving in the Foreign Service for 12 years - with postings to embassies in Belgrade, Beirut and the Disarmament Conference in Geneva he resigned, in 1964, to become a full time writer.
As a boy, I spent summers at West House, our family cottage in Aldwick, about three miles from Bognor. By today’s standards, it was primitive, with only one loo. When we had guests, eight people might be queueing up after breakfast. Nobody came for the accommodation — they came because the company, the conversation and the food were first-rate. During Goodwood, the house was filled with incredibly smart people. Among my parents’ papers, I recently found a telegram from friends saying they would be delighted to come as long as they weren’t given the room at the top of the stairs. They had a point!
Staff services were essential — even though West House was rustic, people dressed for dinner I shouldn’t think an architect had ever been near West House. It was a coastguard’s cottage that belonged to my grandmother. In winter, it had to be closed up.
It was unbelievably cold — damp poured down the walls. The boiler was tiny. If you stoked it at 5am, it produced four inches of tepid water by 9am. To take a hot bath, you had to work for it.
How the cook coped in the pitch-dark kitchen, with its primitive stove, I don’t know. My mother was practical, but my father was useless. Not only could he not change a light bulb, he wouldn’t have recognised one if it had hit him in the face!
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In those prewar days, everybody had staff. My father had a valet. My mother had a maid. The cook had two kitchen maids. They’d all come down from our house on Gower Street. Fortunately, the house had a small gothic lodge at the gates, where I stayed with my nanny, the cook and the kitchen maids. The guests brought their own valets and maids, who were billeted in a local B&B.
Their services were essential — even though West House was rustic, people dressed for dinner. The men wore stiff collars. Their valets laid out their dress shirts with cuff links and the maids ironed dinner gowns. Even on a boiling hot summer’s afternoon, people sat in deckchairs, looking as if they’d just been to a board meeting. I have a photograph of Arnold Bennett larking around in the garden in a waistcoat, shirt and tie.
The garden had a wicker gate leading to the beach. It was idyllic. We all plunged into the sea before lunch.
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In 1942 and 1943, my mother lived at the house all summer. It was the happiest time of her life. She had a smallholding for growing vegetables and milked the cow twice a day. Three times a week she made cheese. We ate rabbits and kept ducks and chickens. I enjoyed doing chores, but my father was determined that I would go to Eton, so I took a bus to Chichester every day to see a tutor.
One of my most precious paintings is a beautiful watercolour of West House by Rex Whistler. He was a great friend of my parents. I’ve also found a photograph of me as a small boy, standing at Whistler’s shoulder, watching while he painted. He was a regular guest and marvellous with children. He’d draw wonderful monsters who liked to shovel up little boys and girls. Rex was never still — always sketching on the back of envelopes and even the odd tablecloth.
I look at the painting and think how sad it was that my parents didn’t buy up the fields around West House. They could easily have afforded to add to the three or four acres they had. In 1944, we went to live in France and the house was sold. Fifty years later, I took my wife, Molly, to try to find it. All that’s left is part of the garden — the rest is a huge housing development. I don’t think my parents ever foresaw the post-war housing boom.
John Julius Norwich’s The Popes: A History is out now (Chatto & Windus £25). The author will appear at The Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival on Wednesday; www.oxfordliteraryfestival.com