Harold Nicolson

(Paperback)

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This lively biography of Harold Nicolson contains a great deal of previously unpublished information, particularly about his private life. 'Entertaining and enlightening' - New Statesman. Harold Nicolson was a man of extraordinary gifts. A renowned politician, historian, biographer, diarist, novelist, lecturer, journalist, broadcaster and gardener, his position in society and politics allowed him an insight into the most dramatic events of British, indeed world, history. Nicolson's personal life was no less dramatic. Married to Vita Sackville-West, one of the most famous writers of her day, their marriage survived, even prospered, despite their both being practising homosexuals. Unashamedly elitist, bound together by their literary, social, and intellectual pursuits, moving in the refined circles of the Bloomsbury group they viewed life from the rarified peaks of aristocratic haughtiness. Few men could boast such gifts as Nicolson possessed, yet he ended his life plagued by self-doubt. 'I am attempting nothing; therefore I cannot fail,' he once acknowledged. What went wrong It was a question that haunted Nicolson throughout his adult life. Relying on a wealth of archival material, Norman Rose brilliantly disentangles fact from fiction, setting Nicolson's story of perceived failure against the wider perspective of his times.

Reviews

"A lively new biography... Thoroughly absorbing... admirably balanced and well-rounded" -- John Gross Sunday Telegraph "[Rose] is able to put Harold's foreign policy skills into context more thoroughly than has ever been done before... Frank and alert" -- John Carey Sunday Times "Lucid and stylish" -- Gilbert Adair Evening Standard "A powerful sidelight on a whole political class between the last world wars, and how they helped make the world we know" Scotsman

Author Bio

Norman Rose is a graduate of the LSE and now holds the Chair of International Relations at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. A distinguished historian and Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, he is also the author of much acclaimed biographies of Winston Churchill and Chaim Weitzman, as well as a study of the Cliveden Set.