Harold Nicolson

El último año de lord Byron (abril de 1823-abril de 1824) contado con amenidad y rigor.El último año de lord Byron (abril de 1823-abril de 1824) contado con amenidad y rigor.Este documentado estudio de Harold Nicolson desmonta la topica interpretacion que aseguraba que lord Byron (1788-1824) habia viajado a Grecia inspirado solo por su entusiasmo helenico. En lugar de ello, Nicolson muestra un retrato de Byron mucho mas complejo y fascinante: el de un hombre totalmente inmerso en un estado de gran confusion mental. Durante su exilio en Italia, se habia apoderado de el una enorme agitacion, que le inducia a intentar rehabilitarse ante los ojos de sus compatriotas ingleses mediante alguna accion singular y de gran nobleza. Para el, la independencia griega suponia un rayo de esperanza, una gran oportunidad personal y una especie de retorno a su feliz pasado. En ultima instancia, su valeroso viaje solo le haria sufrir una larga sucesion de humillantes fracasos. A pesar de todo, se nego a abandonar la causa incluso cuando, al final, ya se habia desvanecido cualquier posibilidad de exito.

Without exaggeration this can be said to be two books in one: it is both a biography of Harold Nicolsons father and a history of British diplomacy from the late nineteenth-century until the middle of the First World War. Described as the quintessential diplomat Sir Arthurs various postings took in Berlin, Peking, Athens, Teheran, Budapest, Constantinople, Madrid and St Petersburg. During his career his instincts mutated from pro-German and hating France and Russia, into a stage of wanting to make friends with those two countries and hating Germany. Harold Nicolson has an interesting and brave hypothesis regarding the First World War making a distinction between its origin and its causes. Regarding the former, in the words of his biographer James Lees-Milne, Harold maintained that from the years 1900 to 1914 we, compared to the Germans, had a clean sheet, whereas regarding the latter, say from the year 1500 to 1900 our sheet was very black indeed. Our Elizabethans behaved worse than the Kaisers imperialists. And when the Kaisers imperialists in the last two decades of the nineteenth-century developed predatory instincts in Africa, they met from us pained and patronising surprise. Harold with justice and a good deal of courage blamed Great Britain for the causes and Germany for the origin of the great conflict.Harold Nicolson always considered this to be his best book and its universally favourable reception supports that with the Times Literary Supplement observing that as a biography it was composed in the new intimate fashion introduced by Lytton Strachey. As has been said though, it was more than a biography, it was a history, and a most fascinating one, of the period leading up to the Great War.

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 Nicolsons 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; Lambert Orme; The Marquis de Chaumont; Jeanne de Henaut; Titty; Professor Malone; Arketall; Miriam Codd. The author himself writes, a little disingenuously, Many of the following sketches are purely imaginary. Such truths as they may contain are only half-truths. In fact, it would be difficult to point to one, other than Miriam Codd, that was purely imaginary, some were composite portraits, others skilful amalgams of divers traits from a variety of different people, and others much more overtly drawn from one real-life figure, for example Lambert Orme clearly represents Ronald Firbank, and Arketall Lord Curzons bibulous valet. There is nothing else quite like Some People and in its own playful way is beyond category. To be tedious for a moment, we have to call it fiction but are then immediately thrown by Virginia Woolfs deft summary, He lies in wait for his own absurdities as artfully as theirs. Indeed by the end of the book we realize that the figure which has been most completely and most subtly displayed is that of the author . . . It is thus, he would seem to say, in the mirrors of our friends that we chiefly live.Fiction? Biography? Autobiography? - the category doesnt matter, the result is spellbinding however you choose to read it.

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 ones 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.