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Sebastian Cresswell-Turner

From:     Dave Death 
Category: Art
Date:     30 April 2007
Time:     05:32 AM

Review:

My favourite journalist returns in yesterday's Sunday Times: 

"Sebastian Cresswell-Turner says he and his professional friends are the nouveau poor – a 
frighteningly downwardly mobile class"

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/the_way_we_live/article1719509.ece?
print=yes

The article is accompanied by a picture of the rectory where he grew up (but hang on a minute - his 
father bought it in 1967?  Hardly the done thing, having to buy ones own abode!).  A worse fate still 
has befallen SBC.  We see him pictured in the room he rents in Hammersmith.   Wearing a suit, 
sitting on a staffroom-style semi-comfortable chair in front of unpacked boxes, with two jackets 
hanging from a gilt-edged mirror, he creates the desired impression of the well-bred down-at-heel 
gentleman living a transitory and itinerant existence, keeping his dignity in impoverished 
circumstances.

The poro SBC finds himself under attack here:

"The suspiciously named “Sebastian Cresswell-Turner” complains at length that his middle-class 
peers aren’t as rich as members of their parents’ generation and have to do shocking things like live 
in Battersea or send their children to state schools."

http://www.pootergeek.com/?p=2849

I hope he will ignore criticism from the rabble; I think his article made very good points.  I see in him 
echoes of myself - his love of Italy, his sense of financial underachievement, the way he defines 
himself by his writing, despite not having written much, since he can find no place in the world of 
business; and his feeling that he is outside of class structures, having a prince's education and a 
pauper's income.  Do say hello, SBC, if you read this.


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