What do you think?
Rate this book
Beverley Nichols : A Life
A generous, meticulously researched biography of a complex and multi-talented writer, musician, and socialite. Connon doesn't flinch at comparing the evidence about details in Nichols' life with Nichols' own imaginative renderings of events, particularly in connection with his relationship with his father. Changes to this reprint are minor and include some new photographs and an updated bibliography and author's conclusion. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
344 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2009
60 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
Read
November 22, 2019Nichols was an interesting man, very talented and clever but never quite achieving as high as he hoped. He was also very gay, and this bio gives at least some sense of the weird situation in the pre-war period and 20s of quite a thriving gay subculture in his arty privileged circle, along with the external hostility, incomprehension, or obliviousness. It's a weird story because he was a compulsive self-biographer who just...lied, a lot, massively, and it's also rather sad to see his bitter awareness of his failure to live up to early promise. I mean, he had stage shows produced, a dozen bestselling books, long-running columns, he was famous. Like Noel Coward, he had a talent to amuse, and most people would count that as a successful life, but he wanted to be great.
I would have liked more on Cyril Butcher, his lover and companion of 50 years (in a no-heteronormative way) who is rather a shadowy presence here, and indeed on Reginald Gaskin, his lifetime valet/cook/factotum (also gay, which is one of the ways Nichols got to live with his partner and never had trouble with the law).
I would have liked more on Cyril Butcher, his lover and companion of 50 years (in a no-heteronormative way) who is rather a shadowy presence here, and indeed on Reginald Gaskin, his lifetime valet/cook/factotum (also gay, which is one of the ways Nichols got to live with his partner and never had trouble with the law).
June 23, 2017
Beverley Nichols lived a remarkably quiet and harmonious life. He was beloved readers, did not suffer from a lack of money, lived in an old mansion, surrounded by gardens, enthusiastically planted flowers and took care of their cats. Like most English gentlemen of the last century, he was gay and had many Affairs with celebrities of his era. But in the end he met his true love, with whom lived for 53 years until his death.
Biography is well-researched. I recommend this book!
Biography is well-researched. I recommend this book!
September 16, 2007
I love Nichols' garden writing. I liked Nichols much better before I knew him, though. The times were rough for who he was, of course, but if Connon's right (and I have no reason to doubt him), he had such a sad, pathetic life. I would have liked more about the relationships that made up Nichols' adult life, and more about Gaskin the loyal retainer. Unsatisfying.
September 20, 2020
There's a GR review by Melody that pretty much sums up my feelings after reading this book on Nichols. Kinda wish I could retain my opinion of Nichols pre-reading this biography. Luckily, my memory is for crap, so in a few months I'll have largely forgotten how sad this made me about a writer who has charmed me with his gardening and cat books.
May 22, 2019
Beverley Nichols was a brilliant and complicated man. He apparently could write in any genre , but was not above exaggerating or fudging the truth. Bryan Connan was chosen by Beverley himself to write his biography .
March 24, 2019
Very well-researched and very thorough. It sadly burst my bubble about the way Beverley Nichols portrayed some of the events in his life, but he did ask the biographer to tell the truth and that is just what the biographer did. Beverley Nichols certainly accomplished a lot during his life.
March 16, 2017
4.5 Actually.
December 18, 2012
I finished this fascinating book on Sunday.
I’d not heard of Nichols prior to a few weeks ago. I was doing a Google Image search for a picture of Rex Whistler, and came instead across a dust jacket Whistler designed, in the British Neo-Romantic style of the 1930s, for a book called “A Thatched House.” The picture was enchanting, and the subject and title intrigued me, so I looked up the author, Beverley Nichols.
I learned he is best-remembered today for his home and gardening books, and that got my attention. I found out my downtown public library had two of his books, and to my surprise, this biography as well. I had initially checked it out just planning to thumb through it, re-checked it twice, and then, a little over a week before the final due date, I decided to actually read it.
Nichols had been dubbed the first of the Bright Young Things. He was charming, attractive, and talented, with many irons in the fire. He knew everybody—Coward, Waugh, Beaton, Maugham, Churchill, the Sitwells, et al.—and was as much at ease taking tea with royalty or composing West End revues as he was getting violently buggered by sailors and Guardsmen in cheap bed-sits. He adored his long-suffering mother, and despised his alcoholic father to the degree he tried unsuccessfully to murder him on three occasions.
He was President of the Oxford Union, an editor, columnist, secretary, ghost writer, composer, singer, actor, pianist, playwright, debater, polemicist, pacifist, and a writer of over fifty books, on topics ranging from religion, politics, children’s literature, fiction, cookery, cats, humor, drama, autobiography, and homes and gardens.
Though I enjoyed the book, I did find some glaring errors, which were even more surprising in that this was a 2000 revision of a book originally published in 1991. I had considered writing the author and pointing out these errors (He calls Columbia University “Columbus University,” the wealthy Philadelphia Widener family the “Widnes” family, and the Third and last Earl of Lathom the Fifth Earl), but it seems he died a few years ago.
Overall, a cracking good read!
I’d not heard of Nichols prior to a few weeks ago. I was doing a Google Image search for a picture of Rex Whistler, and came instead across a dust jacket Whistler designed, in the British Neo-Romantic style of the 1930s, for a book called “A Thatched House.” The picture was enchanting, and the subject and title intrigued me, so I looked up the author, Beverley Nichols.
I learned he is best-remembered today for his home and gardening books, and that got my attention. I found out my downtown public library had two of his books, and to my surprise, this biography as well. I had initially checked it out just planning to thumb through it, re-checked it twice, and then, a little over a week before the final due date, I decided to actually read it.
Nichols had been dubbed the first of the Bright Young Things. He was charming, attractive, and talented, with many irons in the fire. He knew everybody—Coward, Waugh, Beaton, Maugham, Churchill, the Sitwells, et al.—and was as much at ease taking tea with royalty or composing West End revues as he was getting violently buggered by sailors and Guardsmen in cheap bed-sits. He adored his long-suffering mother, and despised his alcoholic father to the degree he tried unsuccessfully to murder him on three occasions.
He was President of the Oxford Union, an editor, columnist, secretary, ghost writer, composer, singer, actor, pianist, playwright, debater, polemicist, pacifist, and a writer of over fifty books, on topics ranging from religion, politics, children’s literature, fiction, cookery, cats, humor, drama, autobiography, and homes and gardens.
Though I enjoyed the book, I did find some glaring errors, which were even more surprising in that this was a 2000 revision of a book originally published in 1991. I had considered writing the author and pointing out these errors (He calls Columbia University “Columbus University,” the wealthy Philadelphia Widener family the “Widnes” family, and the Third and last Earl of Lathom the Fifth Earl), but it seems he died a few years ago.
Overall, a cracking good read!
July 15, 2016
A prolific author throughout his life, Beverley Nichols is known now mostly for his books about his gardens and the houses set in those gardens. He developed a breezy, campy style for these books, and his descriptions are vivid. Some things are out of place in the 21st century, 80 years or so after Nichols lived, gardened and wrote. No matter how little you garden, the garden books are fun, light reading.
Connon has done a good job of adding some depth to the persona that narrates the garden writing and in stripping away the intentional affections to show us the real man. I appreciate his work in researching Nichols's life, which was at times troubled. I would not want to spend time with Nichols personally, but I can still appreciate Nichols's work better for having read Connon's biography of him.
Nichols employed a man called Gaskin for decades. Gaskin makes many appearances in the garden books where he seems nearly as mythic as Jeeves. Gaskin appears far less in A Life. A shame since Gaskin was the one who would really be fun to have tea with, in the kitchen rather than the drawing room.
Connon has done a good job of adding some depth to the persona that narrates the garden writing and in stripping away the intentional affections to show us the real man. I appreciate his work in researching Nichols's life, which was at times troubled. I would not want to spend time with Nichols personally, but I can still appreciate Nichols's work better for having read Connon's biography of him.
Nichols employed a man called Gaskin for decades. Gaskin makes many appearances in the garden books where he seems nearly as mythic as Jeeves. Gaskin appears far less in A Life. A shame since Gaskin was the one who would really be fun to have tea with, in the kitchen rather than the drawing room.
May 13, 2011
I first encountered Beverley Nichols as a writer of garden books. I would describe his style as something along the lines of Noel Coward repartee while double digging a perennial bed; i.e. witty apercus on the passing neighbors' floral faux pas while managing not to do any of the actual digging himself. This biography was a well written exploration of Nichols' wide (but I can't say deep) career as a reporter, gossip columnist, composer of muscial scores, and man about town (and garden). Connon, his biographer, wisely does not try to over analyse Nichols' quirks--like the many times that Nichols confessed in print that he murdered his father--which absolutely never happened, while documenting them at length. This bio is a must for Nichols' garden writing fans, maybe not so much for everyone else.
November 10, 2013
Uninteresting, bland book. Never quite shows why we should be interested in this person.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews