Nigel Nicolson, OBE
Michael Rhodes
to his cousin, the 4th Baron Carnock, died 23 September, 2004. He was
aged 87.
He was a Director of Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd, publishers, 1948-92.
He was born 19 January, 1917, a son of the Hon Sir Harold Nicolson,
KCVO, CMG (1886-1968) and the Hon Vita Sackville-West, CH (d. 1962), of
Sissinghurst Castle Kent, and was educated at Eton College, and Balliol
College, Oxford.
Career: Captain, Grenadier Guards, served in WW2 1939-45 in Tunisia and
Italialian Campaigns and was awarded the MBE (Mil), 1945; he contested
NW Leicester (unsuccessfully) for the Conservatives in 1950, and again
at Falmouth and Camborne in 1951; was Conservative MP for Bournemouth
East and Christchurch, Feb 1952-Sept. 1959; Chairman, Executive
Committee, UNA 1961-66; Columnist: The Spectator, 1992-95; Sunday
Telegraph 1995-2002, &c. His publications include: *The Grenadier
Guards, 1939-45* (1949) (official history); *People and Parliament*
(1958); *Lord of the Isles* (1960); *Great Houses of Britain* (1965);
(editor) *Harold Nicolson: Diaries and Letters*, 3 Vols. 1966-68;
*Great Houses* (1968); *Alex: Field Marshal Earl Alexander of Tunis*
(1973); *Portrait of a Marriage* (1973); (editor) *Letters of Virginia
Woolf* (1975-80) (6 Vols.); *The Himalayas* (1975); *Mary Curzon*
(1977) Whitbread Award; *Napoleon: 1812* (1985) (with his son Adam
Nicolson); *Two Roads to Dodge City* (1986); *Kent* (1988); *The World
of Jane Austen* (1991); *Vita and Harold: The Letters of Vita
Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson 1910-1962* (1992); *Long Life*
(autobiography), (1997); *Virginia Woolf* (2000); *Fanny Burney*
(2002).
He was advanced to OBE in 2000.
Nicolson's marriage, in 1953, to Philippa, daughter of Sir Gervais
Tennyson d'Eyncourt, 2nd Baronet, was dissolved in 1970, and she died
in 1987. He is survived by his son, Adam, and two daughters, Juliet and
Rebecca.
Source: The Times, 24 Sept, 2004.