Six Degrees of Separation – from I Capture the Castle to White House Autumn

It’s time for #6degrees, inspired by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. We all start at the same place, add six books, and see where we end up. This month’s starting point is I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith (1948) which I read for the first time twenty-six years ago and have already used in a #6degrees. It’s about two sisters who live with their eccentric father and stepmother in a decrepit castle. They spend most of their time trying to improve their finances but yearn for excitement. 

Surely anyone who has read this book remembers the first sentence: “I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. . . .”

First Degree

I do enjoy books about sisters and Our Castle By the Sea by Lucy Strange (2019) was one of my favorite books so far this year. The heroines are two half-British half-German sisters living with their parents in a lighthouse in Kent as WWII breaks out. They, and particularly, their German-born mother, are regarded with suspicion by previously friendly neighbors. My review.

Second Degree

Five of my nephews and nieces attended the Merricat's Castle School. I have always wondered if the proprietors named the school for We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson (1962), which is about “Merricat” Blackwood and her older sister Constance who are shunned by their neighbors because Constance is believed to have poisoned their entire family. Query: why are villainesses so often named Constance? Comment: What an odd name for a school! Surely it could not be a coincidence?

Third Degree

Another two sisters who lived in a castle are future queens, Mary and Anne Stuart, featured in Princess of Orange, a historical novel by Elisabeth Kyle (1966). I found this book in the children’s library when I was growing up and developed a dislike of William of Orange, based on his alleged treatment of Mary (who had more right to the throne than he did). Kyle wrote a number of books but this was my favorite.

Fourth Degree

More princesses! The Little Princesses by Marion Crawford (1950) was written by “Crawfie,” the governess to (not yet) Queen Elizabeth II and her sister Margaret, and although it was an affectionate portrayal of the family, Crawford was criticized by the media for writing a tell-all book about the royal family. They didn’t know how bad a tell-all could and would be!

Fifth Degree

Theodore Roosevelt’s elder daughter Alice became a celebrity at 17 when her father assumed the presidency in 1901 – and was known as Princess Alice, according to Stacy Cordery, author of  Alice: Alice Roosevelt Longworth, from White House Princess to Washington Power Broker (2007). You may know her from this famous quip, “If you haven't got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me.”   She has always been a favorite of mine!

Sixth Degree

My final link is the White House, which is suitable as I was in DC last week for a conference at the Department of Labor. I visited the Library of Congress and got a Reader’s Card so I can go back and summon books from its archives. Happily, I own a copy of this somewhat hard-to-find book, White House Autumn by the talented Ellen Emerson White (1985). Katherine Powers is the first woman president of the US – when she is seriously wounded by a psycho, her husband and three children have to rely on each other as the media hounds them and they wait to see if she will recover.

So this month’s #6Degrees took me from 1930s and 1940s England to 1960s Vermont, then back over the pond to 17th and 20th century England, and ended in Washington DC. Have you read any of these? 

Next month (November 4, 2023), Kate has chosen Western Lane by Chetna Maroo.