Sir Harold George Nicolson (21 November 1886 – 1 May 1968) was a British politician, writer, broadcaster and gardener. His wife was Vita Sackville-West.
Nicolson was born in Tehran, Persia, the youngest son of diplomat Arthur Nicolson, 1st Baron Carnock. He spent his boyhood in various places throughout Europe and the Near East and followed his father's frequent postings, including in St. Petersburg, Constantinople, Madrid, Sofia, and Tangier. He was educated at The Grange School in Folkestone, Kent, followed by Wellington College. He attended Balliol College, Oxford, graduating in 1909 with a third-class degree. Nicolson entered the Foreign Office that same year, after passing second in the competitive exams for the Diplomatic Service and Civil Service.
In 1909, Nicolson joined HM Diplomatic Service. He served as attaché at Madrid from February to September 1911 and as Third Secretary at Constantinople from January 1912 to October 1914. In 1913, Nicolson married Vita Sackville-West, who later became famous as a novelist and garden designer. Nicolson and his wife practised what would now be called an open marriage, with both having affairs with others of the same sex.
A diplomatic career was honourable and prestigious in Edwardian Britain, but Sackville-West's parents were aristocrats who wanted their daughter to marry a fellow member of an old noble family and so gave only reluctant approval to the marriage.
During the First World War, Nicolson served at the Foreign Office in London during which period he was promoted to Second Secretary. As the Foreign Office's most junior employee of this rank, it fell to him on 4 August 1914 to hand Britain's revised declaration of war to Prince Max von Lichnowsky, the German ambassador in London. He served in a junior capacity in the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 for which he was appointed Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) in the 1920 New Year Honours. In his book entitled Peacemaking 1919, he expressed critical views including racial stereotyping about Hungarians and Turks during the peace treaty in Paris.
Promoted to First Secretary in 1920, he was appointed private secretary to Sir Eric Drummond, the first Secretary-General of the League of Nations, but was recalled to the Foreign Office in June 1920. In the same year, Sackville-West became involved in an intense relationship with Violet Trefusis that nearly wrecked her marriage. As Nicolson wrote in his diary, "Damn! Damn! Damn! Violet. How I loathe her". On one occasion, Nicolson had to follow Vita to France, where she had "eloped" with Trefusis, to try to win her back.
Nicolson himself was no stranger to homosexual affairs; he was openly, but not publicly, bisexual. Among others, he was involved in a long-term relationship with Raymond Mortimer, whom both he and Vita affectionately referred to as "Tray". Nicolson and Vita discussed their shared homosexual tendencies frankly with each other, and they remained happy together. They were famously devoted to each other and wrote almost every day when they were separated because of Nicolson's long diplomatic postings abroad or Vita's insatiable wanderlust. Eventually, he gave up diplomacy, partly so that they could live together in England.
In 1925, he was promoted to counsellor and posted to Tehran as chargé d'affaires. The same year, General Reza Khan deposed the last Qajar Shah, Ahmad Shah Qajar, to take the Peacock Throne for himself. Though it was not entirely appropriate for a foreign diplomat's wife, Sackville-West became deeply involved in the coronation of Reza Khan as the new Shah. Nicolson personally disliked Reza Khan and called him "a bullet-headed man with the voice of an asthmatic child".
Reza Khan disliked British influence in Iran, and after being crowned Shah, he submitted a "categorical note" that demanded the "removal of Indian savars [mounted guards] from Persia". The Savars had been used to guard the British Legation in Tehran and various consulates across Persia, and Reza Khan felt having the troops of a foreign power riding through the streets of his capital was an infringement of his sovereignty. As chargé d'affairs, Nicolson was in charge of the British Legation in the summer of 1926 and upon receiving the Iranian note, he rushed down to the Iranian Foreign Ministry to object. Nicolson writing in the third person stated he had a "Kipling inside him and something of an 'empire builder'" told the Persian officials that the note was "so categorical to be almost offensive" and wanted it withdrawn. The Persians stated that the note had been written by Reza Khan and could not be withdrawn, but ultimately an annex was added to the note, which softened its threatening tone. However, much to the satisfaction of Reza Khan, the British had to abide by what Nicolson called a "frank and honest" note by withdrawing the savars.
In the summer of 1927, Nicolson was recalled to London and demoted to First Secretary for criticising the minister Sir Percy Loraine in a dispatch. However, he was posted to Berlin as chargé d'affaires in 1928 and promoted as counsellor again, but he resigned from the Diplomatic Service in September 1929.
From 1930 to 1931, Nicolson edited the "Londoner's Diary" gossip column for the London evening paper, the Evening Standard, but disliked writing about high-society gossip and quit within a year.
In 1931, he joined Sir Oswald Mosley and his recently formed New Party. He stood unsuccessfully for Parliament for the Combined English Universities in the general election that year and edited the party newspaper, Action. After Mosley formed the British Union of Fascists the following year, Nicolson ceased to support him.
Nicolson entered the House of Commons as National Labour Member of Parliament (MP) for Leicester West in the 1935 election. In the latter half of the 1930s, he was one of the relatively few MPs to alert the country to the threat of fascism. More a follower of Anthony Eden in that regard than of Winston Churchill, Nicolson was still a friend of Churchill but not an intimate one. Nicolson often supported Churchill's efforts in the Commons to stiffen British resolve and support rearmament.
A Francophile, Nicolson was a close friend of Charles Corbin, the Anglophile and anti-appeasement French ambassador to the Court of St James's.
In September 1938 when Neville Chamberlain returned from Munich with his and Hitler's signature on their "peace" agreement most of the MPs in the house rose in "tumultuous acclamation", a few like Nicolson remained seated; the Tory MP Walter Liddall hissed at him "Stand up, you brute". Other MPs to remain seated were Winston Churchill (who initially rose to catch the Speaker's eye to speak), Leo Amery, Vyvyan Adams, Anthony Eden (who walked out "pale with shame and anger").
In October 1938, Nicolson spoke out against the Munich Agreement in the House of Commons: "I know that those of us who believe in the traditions of our policy, who believe that one great function of this country is to maintain moral standards in Europe, not to make friends with people whose conduct is demonstrably evil, but to set up some sort of standard by which smaller powers can test what is good in international conduct and what is not-I know that those who hold such beliefs are accused of possessing the Foreign Office mind. I thank God that I possess a Foreign Office mind".
In June 1940, Nicolson met the French writer André Maurois at the time when France was on the verge of defeat, which led Nicolson to write in his diary: "June 12, 1940. I saw André Maurois in the morning. He left Paris yesterday. He said that never before in his life had he experienced such agony as he did when he saw Paris basking under a lovely summer day and realised that he might never see it again. I do feel so deeply for the French. Paris is to them what our countryside is to us. If we were to feel the lanes of Devonshire, the rocks of Cornwall and our own unflaunting England were all concentrated in one spot and likely to be wiped out, we would feel all the pain in the world".