Adam Nicolson


Adam Nicolson, 5th Baron Carnock, FRSL, FSA is an English author who has written about history, landscape, great literature and the sea.
He is noted for his books Sea Room ; God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible; The Mighty Dead exploring the epic Greek poems; The Seabird's Cry about the disaster afflicting the world's seabirds; and The Making of Poetry on the Romantic Revolution in England in the 1790s.

Biography

Adam Nicolson is the son of writer Nigel Nicolson and his wife Philippa Tennyson-d'Eyncourt. He is the grandson of the writers Vita Sackville-West and Sir Harold Nicolson, and great-grandson of Sir Eustace Tennyson d'Eyncourt and Arthur Nicolson, 1st Baron Carnock. He was educated at Eaton House, Summer Fields School, Eton College where he was a King's Scholar, and Magdalene College, Cambridge. He has worked as a journalist and columnist on the Sunday Times, the Sunday Telegraph, the Daily Telegraph, National Geographic Magazine and Granta, where he is a contributing editor. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, the Society of Antiquaries and the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland.
He has made several television series and radio series on a variety of subjects including the King James Bible, 17th-century literacy, Crete, Homer, the idea of Arcadia, the untold story of Britain's 20th-century whalers and the future of Atlantic seabirds.
Between 2005 and 2009, in partnership with the National Trust, Nicolson led a project which transformed the surrounding the house and garden at Sissinghurst into a productive mixed farm, growing meat, fruit, cereals and vegetables for the National Trust restaurant. And between 2012 and 2017, together with the RSPB, the EU and SNH, Nicolson and his son Tom were partners in a project to eradicate invasive predators from the Shiant Isles, Outer Hebrides, Scotland. In March 2018, the islands were declared rat-free.
In December 2008 he succeeded his cousin David Nicolson, 4th Baron Carnock, as 5th Baron Carnock but he does not use the title.

Personal life

Nicolson met his first wife, the writer Olivia Fane, when he was a student at Cambridge University. They married in 1982, and had three sons: Thomas ; William ; and Ben. The couple lived in an open marriage during the period of their relationship. Both partners had affairs, and it was whilst on skiing trip to Switzerland that Nicolson had an affair with the woman who was to become his second wife, the writer and gardener Sarah Raven. After a further 18 months, Nicolson and Fane were divorced. In 1992, he married Raven, with whom he has two daughters: Rosie ; Molly. The family live at Perch Hill Farm in Sussex.

Awards and recognition