Howatch Sins of the Father

The Rich Are Different was one of Howatch's earlier novels. It was followed by Sins of the Fathers, which followed the history of the Van Zale family up to the 1960's. We learn that Dinah Slade died rescuing soldiers at Dunkirk, but she destroyed Mallingham and prevented it from falling into Cornelius' hands. After her death, feeling guilty, Cornelius took her children to America, as both their parents were dead. His sister Emily is a very motherly kind woman and she took in the children and they spent a few years under Emily's care. However during the War, Alan Slade and Tony, Steve's son were killed in Normandy. The Sullivan children went back to England when they left school and did not make contact with Cornelius again. Sins follows Cornelius' later life, the problems of his marriage to Alicia and his love for his daughter Vicky. He finds it hard to communicate with people, even his wife, and their sexual relationship is damaged by the fact that she knows Cornelius is infertile. This emasculates him and he can't make love to her. He finds a mistress, and Alicia, feeling lonely, turns to another man, Jake Reischman, one of Cornelius's few close friends. Vicky marries twice, to Sam Keller, Cornelius' closest ally at the bank.. and after his death she marries Sebastian Foxworth, her step brother, but their baby son dies and they split up. Cornelius is close to Scott, Steve's elder son but eventually he realises that Scott secretly hates him for Steve's death and is plotting to take over the bank. Vicky falls in love with Scott but he is unstable, and in the throes of his power struggle with Cornelius, he ends by committing suicide. Vicky has grown close again to her ex husband Sebastian, and after Scott's death, she goes back to him and we know that he will get the bank and Cornelius will die a lonely man. Sebastian's story is based loosely on the Emperor Tiberius, and Vicky on Julia, the daughter of Augustus.