Nigel Nicolson

Vocation

British writer, publisher and politician. Nicolson was the son of writers Sir Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West; he had a brother Ben, an art historian. He wrote many books and founded with George Weidenfeld the firm Weidenfeld and Nicolson, of which he was a director from 1948 to 1992. He also worked as a broadcaster and was a member of the Ancient Monuments Board. Although his father had been first a National Labour and then a Labour politician, Nigel Nicolson became active in the Conservative Party. He was elected Member of Parliament for Bournemouth East and Christchurch at a by-election in February 1952, when the previous MP, Brendan Bracken, was elevated to the House of Lords. Nicolson was re-elected in the seat in the general election of May 1955. However, he was uncomfortable within the Tory party and voted with Labour to abolish hanging and abstained in a vote of confidence in the government over the Suez War. Nicolson returned to writing, particularly on heritage and biography. He co-wrote a celebrated 1973 book on his parents, "Portrait of a Marriage." It balanced a frank account of his bisexual parents' extramarital affairs with their enduring love for each other; it caused an uproar when it was published. He edited his father's diaries and, with Joanne Trautmann, the letters of Virginia Woolf. Later he wrote the "Long Life" column for The Spectator, and a "Time of My Life" column for The Sunday Telegraph. His autobiography, "Long Life," was published in 1997. In 1953, Nicolson married Philippa, the daughter of Sir Gervais Tennyson-d'Eyncourt, and they had two daughters, Rebecca, a publisher, Juliet, an historian, and a son, Adam, a writer. They divorced in 1970. Link to Wikipedia biography