Secrets and ties

It is a truth universally acknowledged that secrets are toxic and break up families. Today we look back smugly on the bad old days of the stiff upper lip when skeletons were kept firmly locked in their cupboards. We think we know better. The English, once famous for their secretiveness and reserve, have become addicted to confessional culture. Celebs expose their childhood scars in misery memoirs, and transparency is hailed as the greatest good.

In this timely book, American historian Deborah Cohen challenges our complacency. The history of secrets and their relation to the family turns out to be far more complex and vastly more interesting than might be imagined. In spite of our much-vaunted openness, we hide away our mentally disabled children. Domestic violence is taboo and kept behind closed doors. Nor is secrecy always such a bad thing. As Cohen shows, our grandparents used it as a family strategy to deal with shame and misfortune; and it worked.