Harold Nicolson biography Series

'An absorbing portrait of an extinct type of Englishman.' Sunday Times

'A scintillating, pointillist portrait of the beginnings of a career and a marriage.' Times

Harold Nicolson - great diplomat, diarist and raconteur - moved in numerous worlds and knew an extraordinary number of distinguished people. This, the first volume of James Lee-Milne's superb two-part biography, traces the life through Nicolson's nomadic childhood in Budapest, Tehran, Constantinople and Bulgaria, his education at Wellington and Balliol, his independent travels in Europe, his early diplomatic service in Spain, his stormy courtship of and marriage to Vita Sackville-West, and his service to the Foreign Office during the Great War. Subsequently he worked in Paris and there encountered Cocteau, Gide and Proust while also embarking on his own literary career. This volume carries the story up to 1929 when Nicolson joined the staff of the Evening Standard.

Harold Nicolson: Volume II

by James Lees-Milne

Published 16 February 2012

This second volume of James Lees-Milne's masterly biography opens at a turning point in Harold Nicolson's life: he was miserable at the Evening Standard and disillusioned with Mosley's New Party but his move to Sissinghurst, where he and his wife would design one of the most beautiful gardens in England, offered a fresh start. Thereafter he became increasingly involved in politics (spending ten years as National Labour Party MP, close to the heart of government during the worst months of the war.) After the war he turned royal biographer, writing the life of George V, two books on manners and a study of his hero, Sainte-Beuve. Thus James Lee-Milne, drawing on mostly unpublished letters and diaries, completes this vivid study of a man of uncommon talents and energies.