"This substantially revised and augmented new edition, edited by Harold Nicolson's son Nigel, draws together extracts from different sources, some unpublished, and from the family correspondence, including letters to Harold's beloved wife, Vita Sackville-West, his sons and parents. It provides a privileged perspective on a tumultuous age; it also reveals an intimate portrait of a remarkable man." "Harold Nicolson led an active life in diplomacy, politics and literature and came to be on close, even intimate, terms with many of the leading figures of his time. His unusually sharp powers of observation and recollection and his gift for description renders portraits of Curzon, Oswald Mosley, Churchill, Guy Burgess and de Gaulle, to name a few; and his position at the heart of politics gives his views on events, such as the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, the Abdication Crisis and the Munich Agreement, great value." "Although Nicolson acquired a leading reputation and influence in many fields, he was always, in Anthony Eden's words, 'a person apart' - his own man - and he made career decisions in which he put the happiness of his wife before his personal advancement. He was never more content than when at Sissinghurst with Vita and their sons." "Harold Nicolson's self-questioning honesty and his ability to see many sides of every question outweighed in him the driving ambition needed to reach Cabinet rank; but these qualities enhanced his writing and he derived great satisfaction from his literary achievements. He was, above all, a writer, and has left behind an incomparable record of what it was like to be alive in those turbulent years."--Jacket.