Lady Heywood's brother and father give an angry riposte after the author told ... trends now
When Suzanne Heywood told her father she was going to write a book about their epic yacht trip, he couldn't have been more supportive.
'Sue came to me, all friendly, saying: 'Dad, I'd like to write a book about my life on the boat,' recalls Gordon Cook.
'I said: 'Fine.' She asked me for the log books, charts, all the interesting details. I gave her piles of stuff and off she went to write it.'
In the end, the book took the best part of a decade to complete but, judging from the glowing reviews following its recent publication, it was worth the wait.
Unless, that is, you happened to have been on that voyage, too.
Gordon Cook (left) and his wife Mary (centre left) retraced the route taken by Captain James Cook on their schooner, Wavewalker, with their children Jonathan, 7, (centre right) and Suzanne, 8, on
Lady Heywood (pictured) is now a highly successful businesswoman and the widow of former Cabinet Secretary Baron Heywood
Because Wavewalker: Breaking Free is less a tale of glorious adventure — setting off when Suzanne was seven, the family spent ten years sailing around the world — than the graphic depiction of a child's journey into hell, a journey helmed by an apparently selfish father and cruel mother; Gordon and his late wife, Mary.
Her younger brother, Jon, doesn't escape either. Branded the 'golden boy', 54-year-old Suzanne claims her mother doted on her sibling while 'hating' her.
The physical risks aside — at one point the boat overturned in the Indian Ocean after hitting a giant 50ft wall of water, leaving Suzanne fearing for her life — what stands out is the author's longing for a normal upbringing, with friends and an education.
Instead, she says she ended up held 'hostage' on board the Wavewalker, forced to work without pay, before being abandoned as a teenager on New Zealand with Jon in tow.
'We had no access to schooling and friends,' Suzanne told the Mail earlier this month. 'We were put in danger and we were often short of food and fresh water. My parents insisted, 'It was wonderful. You were privileged,' but I've stopped playing that game.'
Suzanne, or more correctly, Lady Heywood — a highly successful businesswoman and the widow of former Cabinet Secretary Baron Heywood — said she wanted to produce her own interpretation because it was so different to the adventures as recalled by her father in his own memoir of the voyage.
'I'm now telling my version of the story, drawing on my memories and the very detailed diaries I wrote,' she said.
'It was an extreme childhood and it was compounded for me by another, darker problem because I had a dysfunctional family.'
But when the Mail spoke to Suzanne's father and brother this week, it's fair to say their memories of those times were very different to hers.
'Suzanne's caricatures of Mum and Dad are unrecognisable,' says Jon. 'I can only speculate why she has written this story as she has. Hers is a very self-pitying, one-dimensional view on a childhood that was, for the most part, rich with experience, colour, adventure and fun.'
While Suzanne acknowledged some of these aspects in her book, he goes on: 'She . . . instead viewed herself as a victim in a way I did not see then and cannot understand now.
'To fit her world view she needed villains and has unfairly painted Mum and Dad in those roles.'
Gordon Cook, 84, and his son Jonathan, called Lady Heywood's claims 'baffling'
The family spent three years sailing around the globe in a bid to retrace the route taken by Captain James Cook to Hawaii
His father agrees: 'I can't understand it and no one in the family can understand it. Jon says the years on the boat were the happiest of his life.'
Of course, it is highly possible that both versions of events have their own truth. As the late Queen sagely observed in the wake of claims about the racism Meghan Markle says she experienced while part of the Royal Family: 'Recollections may vary.'
What is undeniable is that the way of life chosen by the Cooks for their family was extraordinary.
Gordon suddenly announced over breakfast that they would all spend the next three years sailing round the globe.
The aim was to retrace the third and final voyage of his hero and namesake, the explorer Captain James Cook, finishing in Hawaii to mark the 200th anniversary of Cook's murder by natives.
Her father was a competent sailor, but one who had never before attempted a voyage on such a scale.
Nevertheless, so it was that in the summer of 1976 they abandoned their conventional middle-class life in Warwick, where Gordon ran the family's hotel and managed Warwick Castle, and boarded their 70ft schooner, Wavewalker, in Plymouth.
The plan was that Suzanne and her brother would be tutored by their parents, both qualified teachers, and then re-enter the UK education system three years later.
In fact, Suzanne was not to return to the UK until December 1986, aged 17.
Having reached Hawaii, two years behind schedule, she claimed she and her brother were overruled in a 'family vote' about whether to end the trip there, with the result that another four years were spent sailing the Pacific.
Throughout the voyage she claims her education was neglected, she was desperately lonely and her relationship with her mother became toxic.
After a decade at sea, she claims she was 'offloaded' in New Zealand, with little money or food and tasked with looking after her brother while her parents sailed on. In desperation, she even telephoned Childline.
After returning to Britain Suzanne Heywood (pictured) later studied zoology at Oxford University
She eventually returned to Britain after being offered a place at Oxford University, against all the odds considering she had no formal qualifications.
But Gordon, 84, the son of a Yorkshire coal miner who was the first in his family to attend university, insists: 'I don't think we put the kids second at all. Their education and wellbeing was Mary's priority and mine.
'When we set out on the journey, she taught the kids in the aft cabin every day, all the way through. We
