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Harold Nicolson's Diaries and Letters, spanning the years 1930 to 1962, were first published in three volumes, and it is in this format Faber Finds is reissuing them. The one-volume abridgement available in paperback from Phoenix is practical, and in itself a superb piece of compression, but such a great work, one of the major diaries of the twentieth-century, deserves also to be available in its full original incarnation.In this third volume we see Harold Nicolson, though no longer a Member of Parliament, still deeply involved in public affairs. He joins the Labour Party: he attends the Nuremberg trials: he broadcasts from Paris on the three-months peace-conference of 1946, and he gives an ...
On the face of it, bracketing Harold Nicolson and Vladimir Nabokov seems unexpected but the latter paid a remarkable tribute to Some People . When speaking to Harold Nicolson's son, Nigel, he confessed that all his life he had been fighting against the influence of Some People. ' The style of that book is like a drug', he said. The critic and biographer, Stacy Schiff, has also admitted ' Some People has exerted more influence than I care to admit. I would reread it any day of the week.' Ever since first publication in 1927 it has been attracting this sort of praise. It is an unusual book comprising nine chapters each one being a sort of character sketch: Miss Plimsoll; J. D. Marstock; Lamber...
'Of all branches of human endeavour, diplomacy is the most protean.' That is how Harold Nicolson begins this book. It is an apt opening. The Paris Conference of 1919, attended by thirty-two nations, had the supremely challenging task of attempting to bring about a lasting peace after the global catastrophe of the Great War. Harold Nicolson was a member of the British delegation. His book is in two parts. In the first he provides an account of the conference, in the second his diary covering his six month stint. There is a piquant counterpoise between the two. Of his diary he writes, 'I should wish it to be read as people read the reminiscences of a subaltern in the trenches. There is the same distrust of headquarters; the same irritation against the staff-officer who interrupts; the same belief that one's own sector is the centre of the battle-front; the same conviction that one is, with great nobility of soul, winning the war quite single-handed.' The diary ends with prophetic disillusionment, 'To bed, sick of life.' As a first-hand account of one of the most important events shaping the modern world this book remains a classic.
Harold Nicolson was well qualified to write this book. His father, Sir Arthur Nicolson, was a diplomat as he himself was in early adulthood being a member of the British delegation to the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 as well as serving in other capacities. A later historian of the Congress, Adam Zamoyski, has described it in the following way: 'The reconstruction of Europe at the Congress of Vienna is probably the most seminal episode in modern history.' Harold Nicolson's classic account written piquantly just after the Second World War is memorable not just for its adroit grasp of the many complex issues but also for its numerous vivid character sketches of the principal peacemakers: Alex...
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Sir Harold Nicolson (1886-1968) is well known as a diarist, man of letters, diplomatic historian, gardener, and broadcaster. Nicolson's bestselling diaries and letters, his many biographies, including the highly acclaimed official life of King George V, and his numerous essays and broadcasts have made him, in the words of his friend and fellow MP Robert Bernays, an international figure of the 'second degree'. Yet there was more to this urbane man than his finely observed diary, stylish writing, and Sissinghurst Castle Garden in Kent, the joint creation of Nicolson and his wife, the writer V. Sackville-West. He also produced a rich and ambitious corpus of writing on the theory and practice of...
Using accessible archival sources, a team of historians reveal how much the USA, Britain, Switzerland and Sweden knew about the Nazi attempt to murder all the Jews of Europe during World War II.
One of the great 20th century political diaries 'Brilliant, riveting stuff' TRIBUNE 'One stops to marvel at the achievement. Honesty, decency, modesty, magnanimity, are stamped on every page, as evident as the wit' EVENING STANDARD 'A tremendous read' SPECTATOR Harold Nicolson was one of the three great political diarists of the 20th century (along with Chips Channon and Alan Clark). Nicolson was an MP (Conservative, 1935-45, who also flirted with Labour after WWII). He had previously been in the Foreign Office and attended the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, and material from this period is included in this new edition for the first time. Nicolson never achieved high office, but rarely a da...
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