Sir Harold Nicolson, Diplomat, Writer, Man Of Letters

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31680, 16 May 1968, Page 20

Sir Harold Nicolson, Diplomat, Writer, Man Of Letters

Sir Harold Nicolson, K.C.V.0., C.M.G., who brought to a varied and notably distinguished career in literature and diplomacy, and to a somewhat less impressive career in politics, an individual grace of style and an uncommonly wide and much admired cultivation of mind, died early this month at his home in Kent at the age of 81.

Nowhere was this style and cultivation more truly reflected than in the two volumes (volume three is coming out later this year) of his diaries and letters, edited with skill and candour by his son Nigel, which appeared in 1966 and 1967, says “The Times," London. Full of witty and intimate picturse of the famous, and immediate comments on the great events of his time, they were very much more than a record of classy hobnobbings, for few excelled Nlcolson in the art of selfrevelation and no lesser diarist could have made so moving and fascinating a thing of the relationship between himself and his wife. Vita Sackville-West, and his sons. Born in Persia Born on November 21, 1886, in Teheran, the son of the British Minister there, Sir Arthur Nicolson. afterwards Lord Carnock (whose life he was to write), Harold George Nicolson passed his early years in Persia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Morocco. This childhood experience of foreign countries, of Persia most of!

all, he turned afterwards to excellent literary advantage; few of his experiences, indeed. were wasted upon Nicolson as author or as the most graceful of journalists. He was educated at Wellington and at Balloil College, Oxford, and in 1909 entered the Foreign Office, serving in Madrid and Constantinople before returning to the Foreign Office in 1914. In 1919 he was appointed a member of the British delegation to the Peace Conference, and this experience proved to be one of the most formative and most fruitful of his career both as a student of diplomacy and as a writer. Created a C.M.G. in the following year, be was appointed counsellor to the Legation at Teheran in 1925 and to the Berlin Embassy in 1927. He retired from the Diplomatic Service in 1929 and settled down to a busy and purposeful activity as author, lecturer and journalist. He married in 1913 the Hon. Victoria Mary Sackville-West, who was to achieve high distinction as poet and novelist. He had earned a literary reputation while still a professional diplomitist. His study of Verlaine, published in 1921, exhibited a felicitous critical talent. Two years later came a volume on Tennyson, not quite so happy a piece of work, but in which once again it was the poetry that chiefly engaged him. Then followed a spirited “Bryon, The Last Journey” and a judicious "Swinburne” in the “English Man of Letters” series, and in 1927 a most entertaining volume, “Some People,” consisting of nine sketches rendered in a confidential vein of autobiography and with the liveliest skill in observation. A year later he produced an essay on “The Development

of English Biography," and In 1930, the first fruits of his ampler leisure, his “Life of Lord Carnock." It is without question a firstrate piece of work, at once a biographical portrait that combines intimacy with detachment and a history of the diplomatic play of events and personalities leading up to the disaster of 1914 which is done with conspicuous balance and lucidity. The two volumes with which Nicolson rounded off the study in diplomacy begun in the life of his father are in a not dissimilar vein. “Peacemaking,” 1919, in which he prefaced his diary of the time, presented as an example of youthful error, by a brilliantly sustained analytical commentary, appeared in 1933; “Curzon: The Last Phase,” a tribute in a mood of affectionate irony, in the year following. Though one later work possibly ranks as high as literature and won attention on an altogether wider scale, this trilogy represents Nicolson’s most important achievement as a writer. But there was little he wrote that lacked value or failed to please. Political Career

As a politician, Nicolson enjoyed not only the advantages of his experience and stored knowledge but unexaggerated independence of mind and much personal courage. He spoke well on the platform and in the House of Commons and was a practised and skilful broadcaster of the more intimate variety. But his habit of detachment—his delicately refined intellectual curiosity—left too little scope for the arts of the practical politician. In 1931, he stood unsuccessfully for the United Universities as a candidate for Sir Oswald Mosley’s New

Labour Party. Four years later he was returned as National Labour M.P. for West Leicester and held that seat until the election of 1945. An earnest, and at times powerful, critic of the policy of appeasement towards Germany, he displayed courage and clarity of vision at the time of the Munich agreement. He took an ironic view of Ramsay MacDonald, whose Parliamentary Private Secretary he once declined to be. In 1940 he was made Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Information, but in the following years was appointed a Governor of the 8.8. C. and permitted to retain his seat in the House. He contested North Croydon for Labour at a by-election in 1948. having formally joined the Labour Party in the previous year, and fought a long losing fight almost as a curious and disinterested spectator of the vagaries of party conflict. Royal Biographer He was entrusted by the King with the writing of the official biography of George V and the history of his reign. The book appeared in 1952, three years after a biography of Benjamin Constant that had all the balance and the readableness to be expected of him. As an achievement in what has been called the tricky art of Royal biography, “King George V. His Life and Reign” is a triumph. Drawing upon the Royal archives at Windsor, Nicolson produced a fulllength. human portrait and a study of the workings of the British monarchy. The book won golden opinions, and, deserved them. In the following year Nicolson became K.C.V.O.

A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and an honorary fellow of Balliol, Nicolson held honorary doctorates from the universities of Athens. Grenoble, Glasgow. Dublin and Durham. He had been president of the Classical Association in 1950-51. He was a trustee of the National Portrait Gallery and from 1952 to 1957 he was chairman of the committee of the London Library. Always a friend of France, he was a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. For many years from 1939 he contributed “Marginal Comment” to the “Spectator” casual, semi-tropical essays of charm and skill. It was a much-admired feature. Hit wife died in 1962. He is survived by his two sons, Benedict and Nigel.