There is a passage in Curtis Roosevelt’s biography that will make any parent, political or otherwise, shudder. After a cosseted period of living at the White House, Curtis, aged 5, is sent to Seattle to join his mother, the daughter of Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR), and her new husband. Exhausted from a long train journey, in a new environment and surrounded by unfamiliar faces, he is dispatched for his first day at school, where he is introduced to a class of strangers as “Buzzie, President Roosevelt’s grandson, who has been living at the White House in Washington”. The sense of embarrassment and confusion of being flung into the world bearing such a label is acute. “The other pupils’ questions left me feeling like someone from a circus sideshow,” Roosevelt writes.Later, he talks about the awkwardness of having a secret service officer stationed in the schoolyard, something that was both a source of fascination and jealousy for the other children. The boy himself is of no interest whatsoever to any of these people; he is merely a curiosity, an extension of the office of President. He writes: “For [my grandmother and mother] to see clearly what was happening to me in the world outside the White House would have meant examining their own relationship to power and privilege, something they viscerally blocked.”

It’s an uncharacteristic moment of bitterness in a book that is otherwise rather generous and gentlemanly. That vulnerable young boy (one thing is clear: FDR’s eldest grandson did not have the temperament for politics) is now in his late seventies; what he offers the reader is a thoughtful and at times cautious illustration of how the emotional stability of a small life can be buffeted by the ambitions of those around it. Most of all, however, it is a cautionary tale of how growing up in public life does not necessarily benefit everyone. Or, to paraphrase Philip Larkin: they f*** you up, the politics of Mum and Dad.
Sarah Vine

Too Close to the Sun: Growing Up in the Shadow of My Grandparents, Franklin and Eleanor by Curtis Roosevelt
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