Harold Nicolson

Harold Nicolson born 21 November 1886 (d. 1968)

Sir Harold Nicolson was a British diplomat, author and politician. He was born in Tehran, the son of a diplomat father. He was educated at Wellington College and Balliol College, Oxford. In 1909 he joined the diplomatic service, in which he held various posts, participating in a junior capacity in the Paris Peace Conference in 1919.

In 1913, he married the writer Vita Sackville-West, who encouraged his literary ambitions. In 1921, he published a biography of French poet Paul Verlaine, to be followed by studies of other literary figures. In 1933, he wrote an account of the Paris conference entitled Peacemaking, 1919.

Both Nicolson and his wife practised what today we would call an open marriage. They each had a number of same-sex affairs, and once Harold had to follow Vita to France, where she had 'eloped' with Violet Trefusis, to try to win her back. However, they remained happy together – in fact, they were famously devoted to each other, writing almost every day when they were separated, for example, because of long diplomatic postings abroad. Eventually, he gave up diplomacy, partly so they could live together in England. They had two sons, Nigel, also a politician and writer, and Ben, an art historian.

In the 1930s, he and his wife acquired and moved to Sissinghurst Castle, where they created the gardens that are now famous and run by the National Trust.

In 1931, Harold Nicolson joined Sir Oswald Mosley and his recently formed New Party. He stood unsuccessfully for Parliament in the 1931 General Election and edited the party newspaper. Nicolson ceased to support Mosley when Mosley formed the British Union of Fascists in 1932. Nicolson entered the House of Commons as National Labour Party Member of Parliament for Leicester West in the 1935 general election. In the latter half of the 1930s he was among a relatively small number of MPs who alerted the country to the threat of fascism. A friend (though not an intimate) of Winston Churchill, he often supported his efforts in the Commons to stiffen British resolve and support rearmament. He served briefly as a Parliamentary Private Secretary in Churchill's 1940 war time government of national unity; thereafter he was a well-respected backbencher, especially on foreign policy issues given his early and prominent diplomatic career. He lost his seat in the 1945 election. Having joined the Labour Party, he stood in the Croydon North by-election in 1948, but lost once again. He was knighted in 1953, as a reward for writing the official biography of George V.

After his last attempt to enter parliament, he continued with an extensive social schedule and his writing, which included books, a regular weekly piece for The Spectator and book reviews.