PRETERNATURAL

“The film follows the life of Siegfried Sassoon, a British poet and decorated World War I combat veteran who was sent to a psychiatric facility for his anti-war stance. He had love affairs with several men during the 1920s, married, had a son, and converted to Catholicism.”

The director Terence Davies’ last film featuring Jack Lowden and Peter Capaldi as Siegfried Sassoon. The timeline of Davies’ biopic is, perhaps, deliberate but given that Sassoon lived at Heytesbury House from 1933 until his death in 1967 it is oddly substituted for wisteria suburbia.

George, who apparently loved a bit of 60s rock, lived with his parents despite not doing so not least because his mother had long since moved to Lochbuie, Isle of Mull.

One oddly accurate representation was the publicity shot used for the marketing. This painting from Heytesbury reflects, uncannily, the shot used of Jack Lowden. The late Terence Davies never came to Heytesbury.

The Manna Machine is a 1978 book by George Sassoon and Rodney Dale, based upon a translation of a section of the Zohar.

The machine was reproduced by Sassoon who was an engineer, who followed the directions given in The Ancient of Days and he claimed it created a food source of algae. This explains how the Israelites survived their forty-year journey in the Sinai Desert. It is said by Sassoon and Dale that a nuclear reactor used to power the manna machine was stored within the Ark of the Covenant.

George Thornycroft Sassoon, personally, was an atheist. He was a direct descendant of the Jewish merchant and banking dynasty known as the ‘Rothschilds of the East’. Alfred Sassoon, Siegfried’s father had ‘married out’ to Theresa (née) Thornycroft.

The Sassoon family disapproved, cutting Alfred out of his legacy. Siegfried financed his purchase of Heytesbury House with an inheritance from his aunt, Rachel Beer. She had also been disowned for marrying out. She was the first female editor of a British national newspaper – The Observer.