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King of the castle: A biography of William Larnach
268 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1997
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
November 28, 2019
We'll be visiting Larnach Castle in Dunedin, New Zealand during our World Cruise. For some reason, I've always been intrigued by old mansions, palaces, and chateaux. Furthermore, I enjoy learning about the family, and this family had a huge skeleton in its closet. The author is a descendant who has written a book full of the history of Australia, New Zealand, and the Larnachs.
August 24, 2025
I mostly skimmed this book, looking for the sections most relevant to my research, which pertains to the circumstances surrounding Larnach's suicide and the ways in which historians present it. Snedden's in the third biography of Larnach I've read within a few months, so a lot of the broad events of Larnach's life were already familiar to me.
One thing that makes Snedden's book better (in my view) than the biographies by A.H. Reed or Hardwicke Knight is that Snedden seems to genuinely be a good writer. Her prose is engaging and almost novelistic--something she implicitly acknowledges in the Prologue when writing, "My task, as a narrator of historical facts, leaves little room for the imagination, but requires pernickety insistence on authenticity. In delving into the history of Larnach, this constraint was not a hinderance, it only highlighted the fact that his life was as full of drama as any fictional saga written today" (xi). In other words, while Snedden insists on the accuracy of her account, she also links her writing to fictional sagas, implicitly suggesting an authorial influence.
Another strength of Snedden's work over her predecessors is that she's the great-great-granddaughter of Larnach and inherited a trove of his letters and papers, meaning she has access to research materials that Reed and Knight did not. However, it also seems like her grandmother's disdain for Larnach (her grandfather, in turn) shaped Snedden's perceptions somewhat. This becomes especially evident when dealing with the events surrounding Larnach's suicide. There are family rumors that Larnach's third wife (Conny) had an affair with his son (by his first marriage) Douglas. And while these are rumors often pushed by members of the family who decidedly disliked Conny, and who resented Douglas for taking her part in the lawsuit over Larnach's property, Snedden treats these rumors as fact. She does acknowledge that a hypothetical letter from Douglas confirming the affair has never been found (and, since it's hypothetical, it may never have existed). But she nonetheless assumes the reliability of these rumors.
https://youtu.be/HJF0Bk9ruqc
One thing that makes Snedden's book better (in my view) than the biographies by A.H. Reed or Hardwicke Knight is that Snedden seems to genuinely be a good writer. Her prose is engaging and almost novelistic--something she implicitly acknowledges in the Prologue when writing, "My task, as a narrator of historical facts, leaves little room for the imagination, but requires pernickety insistence on authenticity. In delving into the history of Larnach, this constraint was not a hinderance, it only highlighted the fact that his life was as full of drama as any fictional saga written today" (xi). In other words, while Snedden insists on the accuracy of her account, she also links her writing to fictional sagas, implicitly suggesting an authorial influence.
Another strength of Snedden's work over her predecessors is that she's the great-great-granddaughter of Larnach and inherited a trove of his letters and papers, meaning she has access to research materials that Reed and Knight did not. However, it also seems like her grandmother's disdain for Larnach (her grandfather, in turn) shaped Snedden's perceptions somewhat. This becomes especially evident when dealing with the events surrounding Larnach's suicide. There are family rumors that Larnach's third wife (Conny) had an affair with his son (by his first marriage) Douglas. And while these are rumors often pushed by members of the family who decidedly disliked Conny, and who resented Douglas for taking her part in the lawsuit over Larnach's property, Snedden treats these rumors as fact. She does acknowledge that a hypothetical letter from Douglas confirming the affair has never been found (and, since it's hypothetical, it may never have existed). But she nonetheless assumes the reliability of these rumors.
https://youtu.be/HJF0Bk9ruqc
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews