Adam Nicolson, (born 12 September 1957) is an English author who has written about history, landscape, great literature and the sea. He is also the 5th Baron Carnock, but does not use the title.
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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 is noted for his books Sea Room (about the Shiant Isles, a group of uninhabited islands in the Hebrides); God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible; The Mighty Dead (US title:Why Homer Matters) exploring the epic Greek poems; The Seabird's Cry about the disaster afflicting the world's seabirds; The Making of Poetry on the Romantic Revolution in England in the 1790s; and Life Between the Tides, a boundary-crossing account of the tides in human and animal life.
He has made several television series (with Keo Films) and radio series (with Tim Dee, the writer and radio producer) 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 260 acres (110 ha) 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.
Personal life
In 1982, Nicolson married Olivia Mary Rokeby Fane, daughter of daughter of Lt.-Cdr. Antony Charles Reynardson Fane, with whom he had three sons. In 1992, they divorced, and he married the writer and gardener, Sarah Raven with whom he has two daughters.
Awards and recognition
1986 Somerset Maugham Award Frontiers
1987 PBFA Topography Prize (winner) Wetland (with Patrick Sutherland)
1997 British Press Awards Feature Writer of the Year (shortlist)
1998 British Book Awards Illustrated Book of the Year (shortlist) Restoration
2002 Duff Cooper Prize (shortlist) Sea Room
2004 Royal Society of Literature Heinemann Award (winner) Power and Glory
2005 Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature
2006 Royal United Services Institute Duke of Westminster's Medal for Military Literature (shortlist) Men of Honour
2009 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize (winner) Sissinghurst: An Unfinished History
2009 Samuel Johnson Prize (longlist) Sissinghurst: an Unfinished History
2010 Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries
2014 Samuel Johnson Prize (longlist) The Mighty Dead: Why Homer Matters
2014 Scottish BAFTA (winner, Factual Series) Britain's Whale Hunters
2015 London Hellenic Prize (shortlist) The Mighty Dead: Why Homer Matters
2017 Richard Jefferies Society Award for Nature Writing (winner) The Seabird's Cry
Books
The National Trust Book of Long Walks (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1981)
Long Walks in France (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1983)
Frontiers (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1985)
Wetland (Michael Joseph, 1987)
Two Roads to Dodge City (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988) with Nigel Nicolson
Prospects of England: Two Thousand Years Seen Through Twelve English Towns (co-author with Peter Morter) (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1989)
On Foot: Guided Walks in England, France, and the United States (Weidenfeld/Harmony, 1990)
Restoration: Rebuilding of Windsor Castle (Michael Joseph, 1997)
Regeneration: The Story of the Dome (HarperCollins, 1999)
Perch Hill: A New Life (Constable, 2000)
Mrs Kipling: The Hated Wife (Short Books, 2001)
Sea Room (HarperCollins, 2001; Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2002)
Power and Glory: The Making of the King James Bible (US title: God's Secretaries) (HarperCollins, 2003) (2011 reissued in UK as When God Spoke English)
Seamanship (HarperCollins, 2004)
Men of Honour: Trafalgar and the Making of the English Hero (US title: Seize the Fire: Heroism, Duty, and the Battle of Trafalgar) (HarperCollins, 2005)
Television
Atlantic Britain Channel 4, 2004
Sissinghurst BBC 4, 2009
When God Spoke English: The Making of the King James Bible BBC 4, 2011
The Century That Wrote Itself BBC 4, 2013
Britain's Whale Hunters BBC 4, 2014
The Last Seabird Summer? BBC 4, 2016
Radio
Homer's Landscapes 3 x 45 mins, BBC Radio 3, 2008
A Cretan Spring 5 x 15 mins, with Sarah Raven, BBC Radio 3, 2009
Dark Arcadias 2 x 45 mins, BBC Radio 3, 2011