Title Deeds - Hardcover

Liza Campbell was the last child to be born at Cawdor Castle, the family seat of the Campbells, as featured in "Macbeth". Her father Hugh, the twenty-fifth Thane, inherited good looks, brains, wealth, an ancient title, three stately homes and 100,000 acres of land. "Title Deeds" tells the story of Liza's idyllic childhood with her four siblings in Wales in the 1960s, until Hugh inherited Cawdor and moved the family up to the Scottish Highlands. Increasingly overwhelmed by his enormous responsibilities, Hugh tipped into madness fuelled by drink, drugs and extramarital affairs. Over the years the castle was transformed into an arena of reckless profligacy and terrifying domestic violence, leading to the abrupt termination of a legacy that had been passed down through the family for six hundred years. Written with a sharp wit, "Title Deeds" is a contemporary fairy story that tells what it is like to grow up as a maiden in a castle where ancient curses and grisly past events like the Glencoe massacre were more real than things that happened yesterday, and what it is like to grow up with enormous privilege and yet watch your father destroy himself and everything he holds dear.

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