Abstract
Its literary tradition has proved to be one of the enduring peculiarities of the British diplomatic service. Although, as Harold Nicolson once observed, ‘the man of letters has always been regarded with bewildered, although quite friendly, disdain’ by his colleagues, successive generations of former diplomatists have found irresistible the temptations of pen and paper. 1 Like Satow, Nicolson wrote widely on various aspects of diplomatic history and diplomatic theory and practice. But unlike the more ponderous and scholarly Satow, Nicolson wrote with ‘ease, fluency and wit’, not surprisingly, perhaps, in a man whose oeuvre also comprised of literary work in the narrower sense, literary criticism and biographies and even two novels. 2 To some, indeed, he was ‘the last of the great essayists in the classical manner’.3
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Further reading
Works by Nicolson
Sir Arthur Nicolson, Bart., First Lord Carnock: a Study in the Old Diplomacy (London, 1930); publ. in the USA as Portrait of a Diplomatist (Boston and New York, 1930).
Peacemaking 1919 (London, 1933).
Curzon: tiffe Last Phase, 1919–1925 (London, 1934); see especially the ‘Terminal Essay’.
Diplomacy (London, 1939), subsequently revised in 1950 and again in 1963, and reprinted by the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, Washington DC, in 1988.
The Congress of Vienna: a Study in Allied Unity, 1812–1822 (London, 1946).
The Evolution of Diplomatic Method (London, 1954); repr. by the Centre for the Study of Diplomacy in Leicester for the DSP in 1998.
Good Behaviour: Being a Study of Certain Types of Civility (London, 1955).
Historical background
Anderson, M. S., The Rise of Modern Diplomary; 1450–1919 (London, 1993 ).
Craig, G. A. and F. Gilbert (eds), The Diplomats, 1919–1939 ( Princeton, NJ, 1953 ).
Mayer, A. J., Political Origins of the New Diplomacy, 1917–1918 (New Haven, 1959 ).
Osiander, A., The States System of Europe, 1640–1990: Peacemaking and the Conditions of International Stability (Oxford, 1994), ch. 5.
Sharp, A., The Versailles Settlement: Peacemaking at Paris, 1919 (London, 1991 ).
Biography
Lees-Milne, J., Harold Nicolson: a Biography 1886–1968 2 vols (London, 1980–1).
Nicolson, N., Portrait of a Marriage (London, 1973 ).
Nicolson, N. (ed.), Diaries and Letters of Harold Nicolson, 1930–1962 3 vols (London, 1966–8).
General
Bozeman, Adda B., Politics and Culture in International History, 2nd edn (New Brunswick, 1994 ).
Butterfield, H. and M. Wight, Diplomatic Investigations: Essays in the Theory of International Politics (London, 1966), ch. 9 (Butterfield, ‘The new diplomacy and historical diplomacy’).
Craig, Gordon A. and Alexander L. George, Force and Statecraft: Diplomatic Problems of Our Time (New York and Oxford, 1983), part I.
Hill, D. J., A History of Diplomacy in the International Development of Europe, 2 vols (London, 1921 ).
Morgenthau, Hans J., Politics Among Nations 5th edn rev. (New York, 1978), pp. 535–41.
Mowat, R. B., Diplomacy and Peace (New York, 1936 ).
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© 2001 G. R. Berridge, Maurice Keens-Soper and T. G. Otte
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Otte, T.G. (2001). Nicolson. In: Diplomatic Theory from Machiavelli to Kissinger. Studies in Diplomacy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230508309_9
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