Title Deeds
  • Published: 2 April 2007
  • ISBN: 9780552772983
  • Imprint: Black Swan
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $45.00
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Title Deeds

Formats & editions
EBook
31 Oct 2012
Paperback
2 Apr 2007
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A searingly honest, funny and moving memoir of growing up with an abusive, alcoholic father in a dysfunctional aristocratic Scottish family: a non-fiction I Capture the Castle

Liza Campbell was the last child to be born at Cawdor Castle, as featured in Macbeth. Her father Hugh, the 25th Thane of Cawdor, inherited good looks,wealth, an ancient title, three stately homes and 100,000 acres of land. But increasingly overwhelmed by his enormous responsibilities, Hugh turned to drink, drugs, and extramarital affairs. Until the castle was transformed into an arena of reckless profligacy, abuse and terrifying domestic violence, leading to the abrupt termination of a legacy that had been passed down through the family for six hundred years.

Title Deeds is a dark yet funny, contemporary fairy story about growing up in an old family where ancient curses and grisly past events are matched by the turmoil of a confusing and frightening present. Liza Campbell shows how even enormous wealth and privilege can hide unspoken abuse and misery: and what it is like to watch your father destroy himself and everything he holds dear.
  • Published: 2 April 2007
  • ISBN: 9780552772983
  • Imprint: Black Swan
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $45.00
Categories:

About the author

Liza Campbell

Liza Campbell is a columnist for Harpers & Queen, an artist, writer and calligrapher. She lives in London with her two children.

Praise for Title Deeds

Campbell tells the wild, sorry tale with a sharp, offhand wit, and a genuine desire to explore the reasons for her father's decline and fall.

Sunday Times

She could have milked the melodrama ...But Campbell is too bright and too good a writer to fall for any of that schlock...she writes not from catharsis or revenge, but in the spirit of puzzlement and discovery...Ultimately, I suspect Campbell and her family will never know entirely what motivated Cawdor's cruelty, but the exploration, in his daughter's capable hands, is completely compelling.

Daily Telegraph

A gripping page turner...Title Deeds is a great title, and Liza Campbell's book lives up to it.

Daily Mail

Lady Liza Campbell has come up trumps with her fanfare of an autobiography...laces her memoir with stirring anecdotes from recent and remote history...This is a sad book; yet Campbell's lack of sentimentality and needle-sharp wit make for a guiltily voyeuristic read.

Independent

A tale of woe signifying everything, a modern tragedy played out among the battlements of a great Scottish castle...written with great courage...a stark tale of profligacy and injustice.

Country Life

A very powerful, painful story of the break-up of a family caused by father's alcoholism, and so has a universal relevance...I have never read such a compelling study of addiction...an exceptional writer...she writes with zest, wit and pith.

Mail on Sunday

This could so easily have become a bitter rant, but Liza's warmth and wit depict the history of Cawdor brilliantly, as well as the sadness of watching someone you love destroy themselves.

Glamour

Fascinating and guiltily voyeuristic memoir.

Independent on Sunday

There's nothing intrinsically noble about aristocratic misery - no one could be clearer than Campbell about that - in a memoir that is as free of self-pity as it is of sentimentality. Even so, it's poignant to see so down-to-earth a domestic tragedy acted out against so historical a backdrop.

Scotsman

A superbly written account of baronial life in the remote highlands.

Harper’s Bazaar