Portrait Of A Marriage: Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson

Description

The marriage was that between the two writers, Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson and the portrait is drawn partly by Vita herself in an autobiography which she left behind at her death in 1962 and partly by her son, Nigel. It was one of the happiest and strangest marriages there has ever been. Both Vita and Harold were always in love with other people and each gave the other full liberty without enquiry or reproach', knowing that their love for each other would be unaffected and even strengthened by the crises which it survived. This account of their love story is now a modern classic.

Nigel Nicolson is the son of the politician, diarist and biographer Harold Nicolson, and the poet and writer Vita Sackville-West who restored Sissinghurst Castle in Kent, now a property of the National Trust. The family were close friends with Virginia and Leonard Woolf. Nicolson was the co-founder of Weidenfeld & Nicolson, was a Conservative MP in the 1950s and is the author of fifteen previous books.

A brilliantly structured account of the dramas, infidelities and deep emotional attachment that went to construct the partnership of Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West -- Michael de-la-Noy * Guardian * One of the most absorbing stories, built around two very remarkable people, ever to stray from Gothic fiction into real life * Times Literary Supplement * Portrait of a Marriage is as close to a cry from the heart as anybody writing English in our time has come, and it is a cry that, once heard, is not likely ever to be forgotten ... Unexpected and astonishing -- Brendan Gill * The New Yorker * The charm of this book lies in the elegance of its narration, the taste with which their son has managed to convey the real, enduring quality of his parents' love for each other -- Doris Grumbach * New Republic * Nigel's insightful Portrait of a Marriage shines a light on a fascinating couple * Literary Ladies Guide * An intimate and controversial account of his bisexual parents' open relationship -- Jennifer Conlin * New York Times *