I have had a copy of "Portrait of a Marriage" since it was published in 1973. For me, it has been a revelation on marriage, but it is also a story of two remarkable people: Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson. Nigel Nicolson relates the story of his mother's Sapphic affair with Violet (whose mother was the mistress of Edward VII) with great detachment, allowing Vita to speak for herself in the form of a secret diary. The non-conformity of this marriage was the reason for its success and that it survived love affairs and differing interests speaks to us of the toleration, forgiveness and understanding that is lacking between so many married people. This book was not put together by Nigel Nicolson as a guide to married life but is a story of the adventure of living.

It was from reading this book that I gained a deep interest in Vita and Harold. I have read many of their books and paid the ultimate pilgrimage of a visit to Sissinghurst. So, I highly recommend "Portrait of a Marriage" for the writing, an enlightening account of two people and a unique experience for the reader.

What a shame that this book is out of print!

Portrait of a Marriage is perhaps the most
eloquent examination of the possibilties and
limitations of marriage as it occurs in our
culture today. The story of Harold Nicolson
and Vita Sackville-West as told by their son,
Nigel, Portrait of a Marriage illuminates the
intimate mechanics of one of the most unusual
of relationships, a marriage in which each
partner has his or her dalliances on the side,
but to which each returns as a ship to its
home port.

A reading of Portrait of a Marriage puts to
shame the base, simplistic rhetoric so often
bandied about around marriage, sexuality, and
relationships, and instead allows the reader
clearly to see into the complex and wonderful
world of two unusual people in love. And what
is wonderful about Nicolson's writing is that
he makes telling the truth about relationships
seem so easy and natural, as if all anyone has
to do to tell a good love story is to step out
of the way. Would that those praters debating
the morality of that kind of relationship or
this kind of marriage or such and such kind of
life-style choice could read Portrait of a
Marriage. In its wake, the idea of love being
subject to logic or laws dissolves.

If you are at all interested in the history
of marriage, or if you just like a good
romance, read this book. On the sea of
writing about love and relationships, it's one
of the buoys.

Both those unfamiliar with the extraordinary life of British aristocrat Victoria (Vita) Sackville - West and those who have read Victoria Glendinning's compelling Vita (1983), Virginia Woolf's Orlando (1928), or Sackville -West's own multiple published works of fiction, poetry, or nature and travel writing will thoroughly enjoy Portrait Of A Marriage (1973). Composed around a posthumously discovered confessional manuscript Sackville - West wrote and hid away in 1920, the book's chapters alternate between portions of Vita's nuanced, forthright manuscript and son Nigel Nicholson's more objective recounting of the facts in the lives of his parents, Sackville - West and her spouse, author and diplomat Harold Nicholson.

Chiefly remembered today for her garden at Sissinghurst Castle in Kent and for being the romantic ("Better to gloriously fail than dingily succeed"), daring, and bisexual inspiration for Woolf's historical, gender-addressing novel Orlando, Sackville - West was a temperamental, multifaceted, and deeply emotional woman who followed the dictates of her heart and defied the conventions of her era to what many would think an alarming degree. As her manuscript clearly reveals, Sackville - West was a very human, self - honest individual who was conscious of her moral and ethical weaknesses and who continually struggled with her wayward nature and its debilitating affects on her husband, children, and extended family. Today a hero to some and a somewhat ridiculous figure to others, readers of Portrait Of A Marriage are likely to come away with more than a modicum of sympathy for the not - entirely enigmatic Vita; throughout her life she managed to straddle a great number of seeming paradoxes and today remains potent proof that many Western conventions concerning love, marriage, parenthood, sexuality, and friendship are as not as tightly mapped out as most would generally like to believe. Unlike fellow writers and contemporaries Hilda Doolittle, Djuna Barnes, or Jean Rhys, her excesses, dependencies, and emotional vacillations did not ultimately undo Vita, either psychically, artistically, or socially. Admittedly, Sackville - West was a child of privilege and remained financially comfortable most of her life. However, her managerial skill, expert monetary planning, and her own hard work as an author, radio broadcaster, lecturer, and internationally acclaimed gardener went a long way towards securing that position.

Portrait Of A Marriage and the story of Sackville - West's life may be the ultimate romantic tale of the twentieth century, though one in which the glamour of wealth, palatial family estates (365 - room Knole), creative talent, international fame, and steadfast love were offset by dark episodes of betrayal, spousal abuse, transvestitism, emotional violence, and apparent child abandonment. Remarkably, Vita's story was ultimately a happy one, and the end of her life, relatively serene. Increasingly a loner with age, Sackville - West sequestered herself in her private tower at Sissinghurst, where she continued to write novels and other literature. But men and women continued to fall in love with her and she with them; as Victoria Glendinning wrote, "For Vita the great adventure was never over."

So many books of English diplomatist Harold Nicolson are still in print. Books about him and his family continue to pour out. It is a pity, therefore, that PEACEMAKING 1919 is not still readily available to readers. --In November 1918 at the time of the armistice, Nicolson was a passionate Wilsonian. Within four months, at the Paris peace conference, he was thoroughly disillusioned. Wilson had too quickly made territorial concessions to Italy, contrary to the principles of the very Fourteen Points which had made a Wilsonian of Harold Nicolson. And the American idol would fall farther and faster thereafter. --Woodrow Wilson rendered more and ever more to Caesar while asserting that he was doing the work of God and the American people. Nor was Wilson the only sanctimonious hypocrite among the leaders of the Allied and Associated Powers at Paris. --Nicolson's diaries and reflections convey, as he intends to convey, the sense that the peace made at Paris to end World War I was the product of poor planning, disorganized diplomacy, growing fatigue and a very large disconnect between experts and decision-makers. --PEACEMAKING 1919 was written as a manual for young British diplomatists who would face future peace conferences. If they heeded Nicolson, they would then be in a position to avoid the disaster known as the Treaty of Versailles. For peace should not be made, as it was in Paris in 1919, in an atmosphere of a "riot in a parrot house." -OOO-

. . . Of a complex and important profession. Sir Harold Nicolson's book, originally published near the beginning of WWII, filled a large gap for several decades. Many books have been written on statecraft, and even a few on the tactics used in statecraft and diplomacy, but never (since Castiglioni's Art of the Courier during the Renaissance) had a book been written on how to be a good diplomat.

The book begins with a short history of the development of modern diplomacy, and then moves on to discuss recent changes and factors in modern diplomacy and to compare diplomacy as practiced by different countries. In reality, this is a handbook for new and aspiring diplomats, as it covers such things as the day-to-day duties of a junior secretary and how to perform them, diplomatic jargon, and proper use of diplomatic techniques.

For the conduct of foreign policy, I would recommend Chas. Freeman's more recent book Arts of Power. However, there is still nothing, outside of official government handbooks, that describes the inner functionings of a diplomat's life so well as Nicolson's book.