Harold Nicolson
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Sir Harold Nicolson (November 21 1886–May 1 1968) was a British diplomat, author and politician. He was born in Teheran the younger son of a diplomat father Arthur Nicolson, 1st Baron Carnock. 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.
In the 1930s, he and his wife acquired and moved to Sissinghurst Castle, where they created the gardens that are now famous.
In 1931 Harold Nicolson joined Sir Oswald Mosley and his recently formed New Party. He stood unsuccessfully for Parliament in the 1931 General Election and edited the party newspaper. Nicolson ceased to support Mosley when Mosley formed the British Union of Fascists in 1932. Nicolson entered the House of Commons as National Labour Party as Member of Parliament for West Leicester in the 1935 General Election. He became Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Minister of Information in Winston Churchill's 1940 war time government. He lost his seat in the election of 1945. Having joined the Labour Party, he stood in the Croydon North by-election in 1948, but lost once again. He was knighted in 1953.
Harold Nicolson's younger son was the publisher and writer, Nigel Nicolson, who published several writings of both his parents, amongst which their correpondence and Nicolson's diary.