{"id":91135,"date":"2015-10-22T12:29:56","date_gmt":"2015-10-22T16:29:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=91135"},"modified":"2015-10-22T12:56:59","modified_gmt":"2015-10-22T16:56:59","slug":"portrait-of-a-miniseries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/10\/22\/portrait-of-a-miniseries\/","title":{"rendered":"Portrait of a Miniseries"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/tDXmWGT_c_c\" width=\"600\" height=\"450\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>You\u2019d be forgiven for thinking I\u2019ve lately fallen down some peculiar <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/10\/20\/precious-moments\/\" target=\"_blank\">Bloomsbury Group rabbit hole<\/a>. And you wouldn\u2019t be wrong. While I was in London last month\u2014and, incidentally, beginning my own marriage\u2014I reread Nigel Nicolson\u2019s classic\u00a0<em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Portrait-Marriage-Sackville-West-Harold-Nicolson\/dp\/1857990609%3FSubscriptionId%3D0G81C5DAZ03ZR9WH9X82%26tag%3Dzemanta-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3D1857990609\" target=\"_blank\">Portrait of a Marriage<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em>His parents, Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson, had an enduring relationship and a successful experiment in unconventional coupling: both were more or less openly gay, they lived often parallel lives, and they remained deeply committed to each other.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>It is with unreserved enthusiasm that I recommend you listen to\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=AjXvkRhoXXs\" target=\"_blank\">this record<\/a>\u00a0of Vita Sackville-West reading aloud her poetry. She wrote \u201cThe Land\u201d at the height of her affair with Virginia Woolf. Her voice is mellifluous and deep and of another era. It\u2019s time travel.\u00a0<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>It is with rather more reservations that I recommend you watch\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=i5xAqZTJ0f0\" target=\"_blank\">this 1990 BBC miniseries<\/a> based on\u00a0<em>Portrait of a Marriage<\/em>. First, because it\u2019s extremely long. And second, because it\u2019s shocking in all the wrong ways. It takes the sensitive passion of the book and turns it into cheap melodrama; translates the memoir\u2019s essential reserve into the currency of modern sentimentality. People who were complex in life\u2014sometimes grandiose and deluded, at other moments truly courageous and always brilliant\u2014become dull and two-dimensional as characters, even if they\u2019re occasionally psychotic. Part of what renders the book so remarkable is the grace with which a son approaches a fraught and personal subject, giving the story to the world in a spirit of real generosity. There\u2019s none of that here. There is a made-up rape scene. And there is plenty of unconvincing aging makeup, so.<\/p>\n<p>But I won\u2019t lie: I watched it in a mad storm of incredulity and delight and wonder that it even existed, and it was altogether one of the best afternoons of my life.<\/p>\n<p>As Vita\u2019s mother declares with a Gallic shrug, \u201cC\u2019est la vie!\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>Sadie Stein is contributing editor of <\/em>The Paris Review<em>, and the <\/em>Daily<em>\u2019s correspondent.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You\u2019d be forgiven for thinking I\u2019ve lately fallen down some peculiar Bloomsbury Group rabbit hole. And you wouldn\u2019t be wrong. While I was in London last month\u2014and, incidentally, beginning my own marriage\u2014I reread Nigel Nicolson\u2019s classic\u00a0Portrait of a Marriage.\u00a0His parents, Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson, had an enduring relationship and a successful experiment in unconventional [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":178,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13115],"tags":[2300,19002,425,19898,1050,19897,19899,7592,12414],"class_list":["post-91135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-our-daily-correspondent","tag-bbc","tag-bloomsbury-group","tag-drama","tag-harold-nicolson","tag-london","tag-nigel-nicolson","tag-portrait-of-a-marriage","tag-tv","tag-vita-sackville-west"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Portrait of a Miniseries<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"October 22, 2015 \u2013 You\u2019d be forgiven for thinking I\u2019ve lately fallen down some peculiar Bloomsbury Group rabbit hole. And you wouldn\u2019t be wrong. While I was in London last\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/10\/22\/portrait-of-a-miniseries\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Portrait of a Miniseries by Sadie Stein\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"October 22, 2015 \u2013 You\u2019d be forgiven for thinking I\u2019ve lately fallen down some peculiar Bloomsbury Group rabbit hole. And you wouldn\u2019t be wrong. While I was in London last\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/10\/22\/portrait-of-a-miniseries\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2015-10-22T16:29:56+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2015-10-22T16:56:59+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-1.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1200\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"675\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Sadie Stein\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Sadie Stein\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/10\/22\/portrait-of-a-miniseries\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/10\/22\/portrait-of-a-miniseries\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Sadie Stein\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/a1aef49f81bfc540a37e03590f3bb4d9\"},\"headline\":\"Portrait of a Miniseries\",\"datePublished\":\"2015-10-22T16:29:56+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2015-10-22T16:56:59+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/10\/22\/portrait-of-a-miniseries\/\"},\"wordCount\":343,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"keywords\":[\"BBC\",\"Bloomsbury group\",\"drama\",\"Harold Nicolson\",\"London\",\"Nigel Nicolson\",\"Portrait of a Marriage\",\"TV\",\"Vita Sackville-West\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Our Daily Correspondent\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/10\/22\/portrait-of-a-miniseries\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/10\/22\/portrait-of-a-miniseries\/\",\"name\":\"Portrait of a Miniseries\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2015-10-22T16:29:56+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2015-10-22T16:56:59+00:00\",\"description\":\"October 22, 2015 \u2013 You\u2019d be forgiven for thinking I\u2019ve lately fallen down some peculiar Bloomsbury Group rabbit hole. 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