Alexanda Waugh and Cressida Connolly made a good pairing in this talk about families, inheritance and fame.

Waugh is the grandson of novelist Evelyn (above) and son of columnist Auberon.

He has just published a history called The Autobiography Of A Family dissecting his ancestors' father and son relationships.

Connolly, the daughter of critic Cyril Connolly, represented the matrilinear side of biography with The Rare And The Beautiful: The Lives Of The Garmans, her book about seven wild, beautiful sisters who had affairs with some of the 20th Century's greatest artists.

With this background Charleston seemed set up for an afternoon of deep analysis of biography and gender. Instead the talk was informal and sometimes hilarious, littered with bawdy anecdotes about the Waughs and the Bloomsbury set.

Connolly played straight man to raconteur Waugh, who seemed determined to give the audience their money's worth by bringing the subject back to sex as often as possible.

Their conversation was given added piquancy because their fathers, Auberon and Cyril, knew each other and had a vigorous love-hate relationship.

In between the gossip there was some serious discussion about family legacies but it never got too heavy thanks to Waugh's self-styled "burbling".