Harold Nicolson, Public Faces

Serendipity strikes again. I've been editing a book Handheld will be publishing in September 2023, about Hilda Matheson, who was among many other things a lover of Vita Sackville-West, and the Director of Talks for the BBC from 1926 to 1931, for whom Vita and Harold Nicolson, her husband, did online live broadcasts. BBC Director-General … Continue reading Harold Nicolson, Public Faces →

Vita Sackville-West, Saint Joan of Arc

Vita Sackville-West mostly published novels, but also a few biographies, and this one is apparently the most well-known. I doubt that it's often read: it's long, detailed, has many elegant maps and eleven appendices including family trees and speculative genealogies. It's a proper historian's book, and has probably been superceded several times since 1936. History … Continue reading Vita Sackville-West, Saint Joan of Arc →

A House Full of Daughters, by Juliet Nicolson

I was in two minds about this book all the way through, and I’m still unclear how I feel about it. It’s certainly compelling, but it is three stories bundled into one narrative, and sold under the bookshelf-friendly title of yet another memoir from the Sackville-West / Nicolson dynasty. (The full title, A House Full … Continue reading A House Full of Daughters, by Juliet Nicolson →

Now posting on Vulpes Libris: The Life of Hilda Matheson, OBE

Over on Vulpes Libris I am wading through the 800 letters that Michael Carney used to construct his biography of Hilda Matheson. She was the BBC's first Director of Talks, and Vita Sackville West's lover (one of them) between 1929 and 1931. Her letters to Vita have ensured that her heroic struggles as a lesbian feminist … Continue reading Now posting on Vulpes Libris: The Life of Hilda Matheson, OBE →

Adam Nicolson’s Sea-Room

Today’s letter in the Really Like This Book podcast scripts catch-up is N, and today’s author is a Nicolson, Adam Nicolson, son of Nigel Nicolson, who was the son of Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West (about whose novel No Signposts In The Sea I blogged about recently). Some time in the 1930s Vita saw an sale … Continue reading Adam Nicolson’s Sea-Room →

Vita Sackville-West’s No Signposts in the Sea

This is Vita Sackville’s West’s last novel, and it is exquisite. For once I agree with the blurb on the back of the Virago edition: ‘this haunting, elegiac tale, published the year before her death, is her last and finest novel’. I do NOT agree with Victoria Glendinning, who wrote an introduction, who says that … Continue reading Vita Sackville-West’s No Signposts in the Sea →