John Julius Cooper, 2nd Viscount Norwich

John Julius Cooper, 2nd Viscount Norwich , CVO ( September 15, 1929 - June 1, 2018 ), known as John Julius Norwich , was a British peer , writer and television presenter .

His works on the Byzantine Empire and the Norman Kingdom of Sicily are best known .

Life

John Julius Cooper was born in 1929 to Alfred Duff Cooper and his wife Diana Cooper . His father was made Viscount Norwich in 1952 in recognition of his literary and political merits . After his death in 1954, his son John Julius Cooper inherited his title and the associated seat in the House of Lords .

John Julius Cooper attended Upper Canada College in Toronto , Eton College , the University of Strasbourg and, after his military service in the Royal Navy , New College at Oxford , where he studied French and Russian .

In 1952 John Julius Cooper became a diplomat for the British Foreign Service . He worked for the embassies in Belgrade and Beirut and took part in the UN conference on disarmament in Geneva . In 1964 he left the Foreign Service to devote himself to writing under the pseudonym "John Julius Norwich". In the following decades he published numerous books, most of them historical works or travel literature, and worked on several television productions.

Lord Norwich was chairman of the Venice in Peril Fund , vice chairman of the World Monuments Fund, and an officer of the National Trust . He was also a member of the Royal Geographical Society , the Society of Antiquaries of London and the Royal Society of Literature . He carried the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic , Class Commendatore , and was Commander of the Royal Victorian Order since 1993 .

John Julius Norwich had a son, Jason Charles Duff Bede Cooper (* 1959), a daughter from his first marriage and another daughter from an affair.

Lord Norwich died of heart failure on June 1, 2018, at the age of 88. His son inherited his title of nobility.

Works

As an author

• Mount Athos . Hutchinson, London 1966.
• The Vikings in the Mediterranean. The southern kingdom of the Normans, 1016-1130 (The normans in the south. 1016-1130, 1967). Brockhaus, Wiesbaden 1974, ISBN 3-7653-0087-X .
• The Normans in Sicily 1130–1194 (The Kingdom in the South. 1130–1194, 1970). Brockhaus, Wiesbaden 1973, ISBN 3-7653-0240-6 .
• The Normans in Sicily. Penguin Books, London 1992, ISBN 0-14-015212-1 (new editions of The Normans in the South and The Kingdom in the Sun ).
• Sahara (Sahara, 1968). Safari-Verlag, Berlin 1970.
• A History of Venice. Penguin Books, London 2003, ISBN 0-14-101383-4 (EA London 1981).
• A taste for travel. Knopf, New York 1987, ISBN 0-394-55855-3 (EA London 1985).
• Fifty Years of Glyndebourne . An illustrated history. Cape Books, London 1985, ISBN 0-224-02310-1 .
• The Architecture of Southern England. Macmillan, London 1985, ISBN 0-333-22037-4 .
• Byzantium . Econ, Düsseldorf 1998 (3 vol.)

1. The Rise of the Eastern Roman Empire (The Early Centuries, 1988). 1998, ISBN 3-430-17161-X .
2. At the height of power. 800-1071 (The Apogee, 1991). 1998, ISBN 3-430-17162-8 .
3. Decay and decline. 1072-1453 (The Decline and Fall, 1995). 1998, ISBN 3-430-17163-6 .

• Byzantium. Rise and Fall of an Empire (A Short History of Byzantium, 1997). Ullstein, Berlin 2006, ISBN 978-3-548-60620-0 (short version of the Byzantium trilogy ).
• The Twelve Days of Christmas . Doubleday, London 1998, ISBN 0-385-41028-X (children's book illustrated by Quentin Blake).
• Shakespeare ’s Kings. The Great Plays and the History of England in the Middle Ages; 1337-1485. Penguin Books, London 2000, ISBN 0-14-024913-3 (EA New York 1999).
• Paradise of cities. Venice and its 19th century visitors. Penguin Books, London 2004, ISBN 0-14-029717-0 .
• The Middle Sea . A History of the Mediterranean. 2006.
• Trying to Please. Dovecote Press, Dorset 2008, ISBN 978-1-904-34958-7 ( autobiography ).
• The Popes. A history. Chattoo & Windus, London 2011, ISBN 978-0-701-18290-8 .
• A History of England in 100 Places from Stonehenge to the Gherkin. John Murray, London 2011, ISBN 978-1-848-54606-6
• Sicily. A short history from the Greeks to Cosa Nostra. John Murray, London 2015, ISBN 978-1-848-54895-4
• Four Princes. Henry VIII, Francis I, Charles V, Suleiman the Magnificent and the Obsessions that Forged Modern Europe. John Murray, London 2016, ISBN 978-1-473-63295-0
• France. A short history from Gaul to De Gaulle. John Murray, London 2018, ISBN 978-1-473-66383-1

As editor

• The architecture of the world. From the Cyclops Wall to Reinforced Concrete (Great architecture of the world, 1975). Parkland, Stuttgart 1987, ISBN 3-88059-287-X (former title: Weltarchitektur ).
• A traveller's companion to Venice . Robinson, London 2002, ISBN 978-1-56656-465-6 (EA London 1990).
• The Duff Cooper Diaries. 1915-1951. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 2005, ISBN 0-297-84843-7 .
• Important cities in history from Uruk to Shanghai (The great cities in history, 2009). Bassermann, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-8094-8024-2 .
• Darling monster. The letters of Lady Diana Cooper to her son John Julius Norwich, 1939–1952. Chatto & Windus, London 2013, ISBN 978-0-701-18779-8

Web links

• Short biography at PenguinBooks
• John Cooper at Hansard (English)
• John Julius Cooper, 2nd Viscount Norwich on thepeerage.com

Remarks

1. ^ Judith Flanders: John Julius Norwich obituary. In: The Guardian . June 1, 2018, accessed June 2, 2018 . 

predecessor	Office	successor
Duff Cooper	Viscount Norwich 1954-2018	Jason Cooper