Parting Words

Last fall, when he declared his support for Barack Obama, Christopher Buckley was more or less excommunicated from the pages of National Review, the magazine founded by his father, William F. Buckley Jr. The younger Buckley’s new memoir, “Losing Mum and Pup” — about seeing both his parents die within less than 11 months of each other in 2007 and 2008 — is sure to cause a few moments of further discomfort in the temple of American conservatism, where except for Ronald and Nancy Reagan, Bill and Pat Buckley will always be the First Couple.

Chic, theatrical and fearless (Norman Mailer called her “Slugger”), Pat Buckley could also be breathtakingly cruel. Mother and son sometimes went without speaking; “Christo” would excoriate her in letters (“Dear Mum, That really was an appalling scene at dinner last night”), which she eventually ceased opening. A “fluent mendacity” came more naturally to her than any capacity to apologize. Her grandest whoppers — for instance, that when she was growing up, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth “always stayed with us when they were in Vancouver” — were weirdly inspiring to the writer she was raising, even as they disconcerted the one she was married to: “When Mum was in full prevarication, Pup would assume an expression somewhere between a Jack Benny stare and the stoic grimace of a 13th-century saint being burned alive at the stake.”