Background

Adam Nicolson was born on September 12, 1957, in Bransgore, Derbyshire, United Kingdom. He is the son of Nigel and Philippa Nicolson. He is the great-grandson of Sir Eustace Tennyson d'Eyncourt and Arthur Nicolson, 1st Baron Carnock.

Education

Adam was educated at Eton College where he was a King's Scholar, and Magdalene College, Cambridge.

Career

Adam has worked as a journalist and columnist on the Sunday Times, the Sunday Telegraph, the Daily Telegraph, National Geographic Magazine and Granta. He is also the author who has written about history, landscape, great literature and the sea. His books include Sissinghurst, God’s Secretaries, When God Spoke English, Wetland, Life in the Somerset Levels, Perch Hill, Restoration and others.

Nicolson has made several television series with Keo Films and radio series with Tim Dee on subjects as diverse as 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. Most of them were broadcasted on BBC 4 and BBC Radio 3.

Between 2005 and 2009, in partnership with the National Trust, Nicolson led a project which transformed the 260 acres surrounding his 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.

Achievements

• Adam Nicolson is a prolific writer. His best known work is The Seabird's Cry, for which he was granted Richard Jefferies Society Award and Wainwright Prize.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Quarrel with the King

    (Quarrel with the King tells the story of the first four e...)

    2008
  • Seamanship: A Voyage Along the Wild Coasts of the British Isles

    (From Land's End to Cape Clear, at the southwestern tip of...)

    2005
  • Seize the Fire: Heroism, Duty, and the Battle of Trafalgar

    (In Seize the Fire, Adam Nicolson, author of the widely ac...)

    2005
  • Long Walks in France

    (A blend of local history, architecture, geology, gastrono...)

    1983
  • Sea Room: An Island Life in the Hebrides

    (Adam inherited this almost indescribably beautiful proper...)

    2002
  • The Making of Poetry

    (Wordsworth and Coleridge as you’ve never seen them before...)

    2019
  • Arcadia: The Dream of Perfection in Renaissance England

    (A fascinating depiction from award-winning author, Adam N...)

    2009
  • On Foot: Guided Walks in England, France and the U.S.

    (Adam Nicols on is the author of Seamanship, God's Secreta...)

    1990
  • The Smell of Summer Grass

    (The Smell of Summer Grass is based partly on the long out...)

    2011
  • Power and Glory

    (James VI of Scotland - James I of England - came into his...)

    2003
  • The Seabird's Cry: The Lives and Loves of the Planet's Great Ocean Voyagers

    (Life itself could never have been sustainable without sea...)

    2018
  • God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible

    (A net of complex currents flowed across Jacobean England....)

    2003
  • The Gentry 2011
  • Sissinghurst: An Unfinished History 2008
  • The Mighty Dead: Why Homer Matters 2014

Interests

• Travelling

Connections

Adam was married to Olivia Fane. After the divorce, he married Sarah Raven. Nicolson has three sons, Thomas, William and Ben, from his first marriage, and two daughters, Rosie and Molly, from his second marriage.

Father:

Nigel Nicolson

Mother:

Philippa Nicolson

Spouse:

Sarah Raven

ex-spouse:

Olivia Fane

Son:

Thomas Nicolson

Son:

William Nicolson

Son:

Ben Nicolson

Daughter:

Rosie Nicolson

Daughter:

Molly Nicolson