Clarissa Dickson Wright didn't just survive an abusive father, she outed him

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/17/clarissa-dickson-wright-abusive-father

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Clarissa Dickson Wright, or "Krakatoa", as she was called by some because of her temper and dare I say shape, I can't imagine was a fan of the Guardian. She was a hunting, shooting and fishing Tory toff with attitude, who got done for hare-coursing and offended many with her remarks about Muslims.

Some of her views, like some of her recipes on TV show Two Fat Ladies, could best be described as "meat in cream". With butter. And yet of course there was something magnificent about her. Her embrace of life. Her lack of moderation meant she nearly destroyed herself with alcoholism. After all, this is a woman who blew nearly £3m inheritance on yachts, gambling and all kinds of debauchery, mostly involving drink. But there was something wonderful about her huge intellect and huge appetite. The phrase – larger than life – never fits. She was perhaps exactly the right size for all her extravagances, eccentricities and extremes.

Much surely stemmed from her childhood. She grew up with an abusive father, who she said beat her and her mother viciously. The recounting of his violence is shocking though because it is not dramatic. It is straightforward. The man who beat her was a healer; a brilliant surgeon. And also an alcoholic. She was brutalised in a privileged environment. The poker he hit her with had an ormolu handle. The fireplace "he bashed my brother's head against was made of marble". She thought that the violence in her family was therefore "different from the stuff you read about in papers".

Her mother did not hide it and would go out with broken cheekbones and severe bruising. Did no one intervene? The medical profession closed ranks around him. Dickson Wright herself got used to broken ribs. Once, he broke her nose. She described the awful feeling of waiting for a eruption, "because once the eruption had happened there would be a lull". The tension of waiting for violence felt worse to her. You can hear women in refuges, in prison and on the streets say the same thing.

Boarding school was a refuge for her and then came escape through alcohol. Though there never could be enough for the oblivion she craved.

So the sheer swagger of the woman (she once put two muggers in intensive care) was a rebuttal of another life when she was indeed a victim. For all the joy and raucousness in the obituaries, there remains the fundamental sadness of her words. She did not have children – she could not trust herself because of what she called "the dynamic" in which she grew up.

Her advice for anyone who finds themselves in a violent home was: "Go and find somebody you trust and tell them. But make sure it's somebody you trust, because I tried it once and all they did was write to my father."

Dickson Wright often seemed as short on empathy she did on self–pity. It's a package maybe. I cannot imagine any part of her would want be remembered as anyone's victim, but the long-term effect of domestic violence shook and stirred her life. She lived through awful abuse which is classless and so often nameless. In naming it, Dickson Wright exhibited her formidable bravery. And though she was sober for the past 26 years, I am minded to raise a glass to her, for her bullish integrity despite the damage she suffered. "Let's drink a toast to those who best survived the life they've led."