Beverley Nichols
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John Beverley Nichols (born September 9, 1898 in Bower Ashton, Bristol, died September 15, 1983 in the hospital at Kingston, London), was an English author, playwright, journalist, composer, and public speaker. He went to school at Marlborough College, and went to Balliol College, Oxford University, and was President of the Oxford Union and editor of Isis.
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[edit] Life
Between his first book, the novel Prelude, published in 1920, and his last, a book of poetry, Twilight, published in 1982, Nichols wrote more than 60 books and plays. Besides novels, mysteries, short stories, essays and children's books, he wrote a number of non-fiction books on travel, politics, religion, cats, parapsychology, and autobiography. He wrote for a number of magazines and newspapers throughout his life, the longest being weekly columns for the London Sunday Chronicle newpaper (1932-1943) and Woman's Own magazine (1946-1967).
Nichols is now best remembered for his gardening books, the first of which, Down the Garden Path, was illustrated — as was its two sequels — by Rex Whistler. This bestseller — which has had 32 editions and has been in print almost continuously since first published in 1932 — was the first of his trilogy about Allways, his Tudor thatched cottage in Glatton, Cambridgeshire. A book about his city garden near Hampstead Heath in London, Green Grows the City, published in 1939, was another big best seller. That book introduced Arthur R. Gaskin, who was Nichols’s manservant from 1924 until Gaskin's death from cirrhosis in 1966. Gaskin was a popular character, who also appeared in the succeeding gardening books. A later trilogy written between 1951 and 1956 documents Nichols's travails renovating Merry Hall (Meadowstream), a Georgian manor house in Agates Lane, Ashtead, Surrey, where Nichols lived from 1946 to 1956. These books often feature his gifted but laconic gardener "Oldfield". Nichols's final trilogy is referred to as "The Sudbrook Trilogy" (1963–1968) and concerns his late 18th-century attached cottage at Ham, (near Richmond), Surrey.
Nichols wrote on a wide range of topics, always looking for "the next big thing." As examples, he ghostwrote Dame Nellie Melba’s "autobiography" Memories and Melodies (1925), and in 1966 he wrote A Case of Human Bondage about the marriage and divorce of William Somerset Maugham and Gwendoline Maud Syrie Barnardo, which was highly critical of Maugham. Father Figure, which appeared in 1972 and in which he described how he had tried to murder his alcoholic and abusive father, caused a great uproar and several people asked for his prosecution.
Nichols made one appearance on film - in 1931 he appeared in Glamour, directed by Seymour Hicks and Harry Hughes, playing the small part of the Hon. Richard Wells. The film is now lost.
Nichols' long-term, life partner was Cyril Butcher.[1] Nichols died in 1983 from complications after a fall on his birthday at Sudbrook Cottage. His remains were scattered in the church yard in Glatton.
[edit] Selected bibliography
[edit] Gardening, homes and restoration
[edit] Novels
[edit] Mysteries
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[edit] Plays
[edit] Autobiographies
[edit] Political[edit] Biography
[edit] Children's Books
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[edit] References
- ^ Connon, Bryan (2000), Beverley Nichols: A Life, Timber Press, ISBN 088192444X
