Customer Reviews

Harold Nicolson

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When I got to then end of this biography, I thought to myself `What a great life!'. Harold was the son of Sir Arthur Nicolson who ended his own distinguished career in the diplomatic service as the UK's Permanent Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs and entered the peerage on his retirement. Harold would never stick to one career and never match his father. He left Baliol, Oxford University with a 3rd Class degree; this outcome was reflected in Harold's professional life. He had entry to every career he ever wanted but would never wholly commit himself or succeed to the highest level as his father did. But what careers he had. He was a gifted diplomatist and played an important supportive role at the Conference at Versailles producing one superb memorandum after another on the carve up of Europe after WW1. Many of his recommendations were accepted and it was only the streak of arrogance that ran through him that, ultimately, made it difficult for him to get beyond the grade of Counsellor.

He resigned from diplomacy to become a journalist, MP, broadcaster and amazingly prolific author (including his classic book `Diplomacy' which, I know, is still read by young keen diplomatists), and, of course, creator with his wife Vita Sackville-West, of Sissinghurt's gardens (incidentally Sissinghurst was owned 100% by Vita). His political career was rather lacklustre; he joined Oswald Mosley's ill fated New Party basically because he could and it would give him the best chance of entering Parliament. He did become an MP but he wasn't tough enough or competitive or even interested enough for a career in politics. His biography gives us an excellent inside view of Versailles; Harold remembered the conference as chaotic and disappointing but readers are reminded that his wife was conducting her most dangerous affair at this time* and Harold was dealing with that too. It also gives great insights into the British political scene leading up to WW2 and though to the 1950s.

Harold's downside is his strong sense of elitism and his vociferous, even for the times, racism. I found him obnoxious at times and degraded by the revelations. He was capable of strong dislikes and radical leftist Phillip Toynbee, a close friend of his son Ben, appears to have been his bęte noire. But primarily, amongst his friends and peers, Harold was a gentle, compassionate, well liked man who loved his life. I like the way he took advantage of the silver spoon life gave him and lived his life to the full. I am amazed by his productivity. At the end of his life he had no regrets about his career and specifically said he was glad he had left his diplomatic life behind. His only regret was that his beloved wife, Vita, was no longer with him; her death broke his own will to live.

I first got to know about Harold Nicolson through his son Nigel's `Portrait of a Marriage' which brought into the public domain the open nature of his parents' marriage and the homosexuality of both. One of the main benefits of the openness and the separateness of their lives (Harold was in London on week-days) must have been that it allowed both Harold and Vita to lead incredibly productive professional lives. Their extra-marital affairs appear to have been secondary (apart from Vita's early affair with Violet Trefusis*). Harold's eldest son, Ben, wrote to Phillip Toynbee as late as September 1968 (Harold died in May), `What is ironical is that neither of them will live in history except as creators of Sissinghurst and for the Diaries [Harold's - they have never been out of print].' That, frankly, could have been good enough but when Nigel published his book in 1973 he made his parents world famous. This biography is recommended but beware that a lot of it reads like a political history book.