Harold Nicolson

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Harold Nicolson (1913)

Sir Harold George Nicolson KCVO CMG (born November 21, 1886 in Tehran , Iran , † May 1, 1968 at Sissinghurst Castle in Kent ) was a British diplomat , author and politician.

Life

He was the younger son of the diplomat Arthur Nicolson . After the Wellington private school, he attended Balliol College , Oxford . In 1909 he entered the diplomatic service, where he held various posts and in 1919 enabled him to participate in the Paris Peace Conference .

Blue plaque on apartment building on Ebury Street, Belgravia , ( London )

In 1913 he married the writer Vita Sackville-West , with whom he had two sons, Benedict and Nigel . She supported him in his literary ambitions. As the youngest employee in the Foreign Office , he was given the task of presenting the British declaration of war to the German ambassador Karl Max von Lichnowsky on August 4, 1914. In 1921 he published a biography of the French poet Paul Verlaine and later studies on Alfred Tennyson , Byron , Swinburne and Sainte-Beuve . In 1925 he was sent to the embassy in Tehran, where he stayed until mid-1927 when he was called back to London. In 1928 he became Charge d'Affaires in Berlin. In 1929, however, he left the diplomatic service. In the early 1930s he wrote a triptych on various aspects of British diplomacy; in the first part (“the old diplomacy)” he dealt with his father's work in the Foreign Office and the increase in tensions between the great powers on the eve of the First World War. In the second part he described the Paris conference in 1933 with the title "Peacemaking, 1919". In the last part he dealt in his 1934 publication Curzon: The Last Phase, 1919–1925: A Study in Post-War Diplomacy then with the British post -war diplomacy , for which the longtime Foreign Minister Lord Curzon was responsible. Later, his diaries also became well known.

Sissinghurst Castle

In the 1930s, he and his wife Vita purchased Sissinghurst Castle , where they laid out the now famous gardens.

In 1931 Harold Nicolson joined Sir Oswald Mosley and his newly founded New Party , for which he edited the party newspaper ( Action ). In the general election of 1931 , he ran unsuccessfully. After Mosley founded the British Union of Fascists in 1932, Nicolson distanced himself from Mosley.

In 1935 Nicolson moved into the House of Commons as a member of the National Labor Party . He became Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Minister of Information in Winston Churchill's 1940s wartime government .

In 1945 he lost his seat in the general election and was defeated in a by-election in 1948 . In 1953 he was knighted. In 1958 he was elected as an honorary foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters .

Works

  • Paul Verlaine (1921).
  • Sweet Waters (1921) novel
  • Tennyson: Aspects of His Life, Character and Poetry (1923)
  • Byron: The Last Journey (1924)
  • Swinburne (1926)
  • Some People (1926)
  • Portrait of a Diplomatist: Being the Life of Sir Arthur Nicolson, First Lord Carnock, and a Study of the Origins of the Great War Houghton Mifflin (1930).
    • The diplomatic conspiracy. From Sir Arthur Nicolson's Life, 1849-1928 . Frankfurter Societäts-Druckerei, Frankfurt am Main 1930.
  • People and Things: Wireless Talks (1931)
  • Public Faces (1932) novel
    • The masters of the world in private. German from Hermynia zur Mühlen , Frankfurter Societäts-Druckerei, Frankfurt am Main 1933.
  • Peacemaking 1919 Constable (1933)
    • Friedensmacher 1919. Peacemaking 1919. German by Hans Reisiger , S. Fischer Verlag, Berlin 1933.
  • Curzon: The Last Phase, 1919–1925: A Study in Post-War Diplomacy Constable (1934)
  • Dwight Morrow (1935)
  • Diplomacy: a Basic Guide to the Conduct of Contemporary Foreign Affairs (1939)
  • Is the War Inevitable? In Dt. transfer by Paul Baudisch, Bermann-Fischer Verlag, Stockholm 1939
  • Why Britain is at War Penguin Books (1939)
  • Friday Mornings 1941–1944 (1944)
  • Another World Than This (1945) (Ed. With Vita Sackville-West)
  • The Congress of Vienna: A Study in Allied Unity: 1812–1822 (1946)
  • Comments 1944–1948 (1948) - collected articles from the Spectator
  • King George V Constable (1952)
  • The Evolution of Diplomacy (Chichele Lectures 1953; 1954)
  • Good Behavior, being a Study of Certain Types of Civility Constable (1955)
  • The English Sense of Humor and other Essays Constable (1956)
  • The Age of Reason (1700-1789) Constable (1960; German: The Age of Reason 1961)

literature

  • Nigel Nicolson : Portrait of a Marriage. Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West (= Ullstein book no. 30387 The woman in literature ). Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main 1996, ISBN 3-548-30387-0 (biography).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Honorary Members: Harold Nicolson. Retrieved March 17, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Nicolson, Harold
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Nicolson, Harold George (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British diplomat, author and politician, Member of the House of Commons
DATE OF BIRTH November 21, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH Tehran , Iran
DATE OF DEATH May 1, 1968
Place of death Sissinghurst Castle in Kent, England