Harold Nicolson

Sir Harold Nicolson (November 21 1886-May 1 1968) was an English diplomat, author and politician. He was born in Teheran to a diplomat father. He was educated at Wellington College and Balliol College, Oxford. In 1909 he joined the diplomatic service, in which he held various posts, being able to participate in a junior capacity in the Paris Peace Conference in 1919.

In 1913 he had married the writer Vita Sackville-West, and she encouraged his literary ambitions. In 1921, he published a biography of Paul Verlaine, to be followed by studies of Tennyson, Byron, Swinburne and Sainte-Beuve. In 1933, he wrote an account of the Paris conference entitled Peacemaking, 1919.

Having dabbled with Oswald Mosley's party, he became a member of Parliament for West Leicester in 1935, for the ruling National Labour Party. He became Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Minister of Information in Winston Churchill's 1940 government. He lost his seat in the election of 1945. He was knighted in 1953.