ABSTRACT
During the middle of his second decade as an architect, Snelling’s apparently idyllic life began to develop serious tensions. After the birth of his first son Christopher in 1963, he lost his earlier rapport with his step-daughter, Amanda, and his wife Patricia became gradually, but terminally, unhappy and ill. Amanda later recalled her adolescent years this way:
Douglas and Mum had really weird ideas about who I was allowed to see – only people they approved of. They were very conscious about what do their parents do . . . what car do they drive . . . and he was also very controlling of Mum. She had to join the Black and White Committee, society ladies raising funds for charity, because that would support their social standing, and he had to approve of her circle of friends. Neither Mum nor I had any sort of life outside what he wanted. Anything Mum was attached to, he tried to stop. . . . My mother wasn’t a very happy woman, I think a manic depressive. Even before she married Douglas I can remember her being taken away to hospital . . . she lived on lithium tablets. And they were drinking every day and smoking constantly. From 5pm on, it was all just sitting around drinking alcohol. She used to drink gin and tonic; he was more a scotch and wine man. Everyone drank in those days.1
