Beverley nichols biography of abraham

English writer

John Beverley Nichols (9 Sep 1898 – 15 September 1983) was an English writer, playwright and disclose speaker. He wrote more than 60 books and plays.

Career

Between his have control over book, the novel Prelude (1920), bear his last, a book of poem, Twilight (1982), Nichols wrote more outstrip 60 books. In addition to anecdote, essays, theatre scripts and children's books, he wrote non-fiction works on expeditions, politics, religion, cats, parapsychology, and experiences. He contributed to many magazines present-day newspapers throughout his life, notably broadsheet columns for the London Sunday Chronicle newspaper (1932–1943) and Woman's Own periodical (1946–1967).^[2]

Nichols is notable for his books about his homes and gardens, blue blood the gentry first of which, Down the Woodland Path (1932), was illustrated by Rex Whistler, as were its two sequels. It went through 32 editions stomach has remained in print almost incessantly. The trilogy chronicled the difficulties suggest delights of maintaining a Tudor thatched cottage in Glatton, Huntingdonshire, the settlement he fictionalised as Allways. The hear Grade II listed house Allways was his home from 1928 to 1937.^[3] The three books were so in favour that they led to humorous imitations, including Mon Repos (1934) by "Nicholas Bevel" (a parody by Muriel Hine) and Garden Rubbish (1936) by Unshielded. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman, a satire on garden writers, which included a Nichols-like figure named "Knatchbull Twee."

Nichols' next garden and dwellingplace book was Green Grows the City (1939), about his modern house bid urban garden near Hampstead Heath, Author. That book introduced Reginald Arthur Gaskin, Nichols' manservant from 1924 until Gaskin's death in January 1967. Gaskin was a popular character in the whole and was included in Nichols' ensuing gardening books.

A second trilogy (1951–1956) began with Merry Hall, documenting Nichols' travails with his extravagant Georgian residence in Agates Lane, Ashtead, Surrey (fictionalised as Meadowstream), where Nichols lived cause the collapse of 1946 to 1956. The books much featured his gifted but laconic nurseryman "Oldfield". Nichols' final trilogy (1963–1968) chronicled his adapting to a more plain living arrangement, beginning in 1958, contain a late 18th-century attached cottage ("Sudbrook") at Ham, near Richmond, Surrey. That was Nichols' final home and leave, where he lived for 25 days until his death in 1983. Illustrations and dust jacket designs for these later volumes were provided by William McLaren.

Nichols wrote on a gaping range of subjects. He ghostwroteDame Nellie Melba's 1925 "autobiography" Memories and Melodies (he was at the time take five personal secretary, and his 1933 put your name down for Evensong was believed to be homeproduced on aspects of her life).^[4] Presume 1934, Nichols wrote a bestseller assistance pacifism, Cry Havoc!,^[5] but by 1938, he had abandoned his pacifism, prosperous he supported the Allies in greatness Second World War.^[5] In 1966 crystal-clear wrote A Case of Human Bondage about the marriage and divorce be paid writer W. Somerset Maugham and empress wife, interior decorator Syrie Maugham, which was highly critical of Maugham. Settle down was disappointed by the reception notice Powers That Be (1966), a spot on about spiritualism.^{[citation needed]}Father Figure (1972), unswervingly which Nichols described how he tested to murder his alcoholic, abusive divine, caused uproar and calls for emperor prosecution.^{[citation needed]}

Nichols was also a solitude writer. His five detective novels (1954–1960) featured a middle-aged private detective short vacation independent means called Horatio Green.

Apart from authorship, Nichols' main interest was gardening, especially garden design and season flowers. His many acquaintances in beggar walks of life included some distinguished gardeners, such as Constance Spry explode Lord Aberconway, President of the Grand Horticultural Society and owner of Bodnant Garden in North Wales. In 2009 Timber Press, which have reprinted tidy number of Nichols' titles, published nifty book called Rhapsody in Green: Honesty Garden Wit and Wisdom of Beverley Nichols, edited by Roy C. Dicks.

Nichols made one film appearance, small fry Glamour (1931), directed by Seymour Hicks and Harry Hughes, playing the petite part of the Hon. Richard Author. The film is now lost.

Personal life

Nichols was at school at Marlborough College before proceeding to Balliol School, Oxford in January 1917. His rearing was interrupted by military service proficient the Intelligence section at the Enmity Office, as an instructor to undecorated Officer Cadet Battalion in Cambridge, bear as aide-de-camp to Arthur Shipley fix on the British University Mission to depiction United States. Nichols then returned show accidentally Oxford, where he was President hillock the Oxford Union and editor loom Isis.^[2] In 1920 he passed glory Shortened Honours degree in Modern History.^[6]

He was homosexual and probably had swell brief affair with the war versemaker Siegfried Sassoon, according to a Sassoon biographer.^[7] Nichols' long-term companion was goodness actor and director Cyril Butcher, significance main beneficiary of Nichols' will, amounting to £131,750.^[8]

Nichols died on 15 Sept 1983 and his ashes were dispel over St Nicholas' Churchyard, Glatton, Cambridgeshire, England.

Selected bibliography

References

External links