page_title: Harold Nicolson
section_title: Diplomatic career
hierarchical_section_title: Harold Nicolson / Diplomatic career
caption_attribution_description: English: From left to right: Harold Nicolson, Vita Sackville-West, Rosamund Grosvenor, Lionel Sackville-West
context_page_description: Sir Harold George Nicolson, KCVO CMG, was a British politician, historian, biographer, diarist, novelist, lecturer, journalist, broadcaster and gardener. He was the husband of writer Vita Sackville-West.
context_section_description: In 1909 Nicolson joined HM Diplomatic Service. He served as attaché at Madrid from February to September 1911, and then Third Secretary at Constantinople from January 1912 to October 1914. In 1913, Nicolson married the novelist Vita Sackville-West. Nicolson and his wife practised what today would be called an open marriage with both having affairs with people of the same sex. A diplomatic career was an honorable and prestigious one in Edwardian Britain, but Sackville-West's parents were aristocrats who wanted their daughter to marry a fellow aristocrat from an old noble family; they gave only reluctant approval to the marriage.
  During the First World War he served at the Foreign Office in London, during which time he was promoted to Second Secretary. As the Foreign Office's most junior employee at this rank, it fell to him on 4 August 1914 to hand Britain's revised declaration of war to Prince Max von Lichnowsky, the German ambassador in London. In December 1917 Nicolson had to explain to Sackville-West that he had contracted a venereal disease as a result of an anonymous homosexual encounter, and he had probably passed it to her. As it turned out, he had not. He served in a junior capacity in the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, for which he was appointed Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) in the 1920 New Year Honours.
  Promoted First Secretary in 1920, he was appointed private secretary to Sir Eric Drummond, first Secretary-General of the League of Nations, but was recalled to the Foreign Office in June 1920. In the same year, Sackville-West become involved in an intense relationship with Violet Trefusis that nearly wrecked her marriage; as Nicolson wrote in his diary, "Damn! Damn! Damn! Violet. How I loathe her". On one occasion, Nicolson had to follow Vita to France, where she had "eloped" with Violet Trefusis, to try to win her back. Nicolson himself was no stranger to homosexual affairs. Among others, he was involved in a long-term relationship with Raymond Mortimer, whom both he and Vita affectionately referred to as "Tray". Nicolson and Vita discussed their shared homosexual tendencies frankly with each other, and remained happy together. They were famously devoted to each other, writing almost every day when separated due to Nicolson's long diplomatic postings abroad, or Vita's insatiable wanderlust. Eventually, he gave up diplomacy, partly so they could live together in England.
  In 1925 he was promoted Counsellor and posted to Tehran as Chargé d'affaires. That same year, General Reza Khan deposed the last Qajar Shah, Ahmad Shah Qajar, to take the Peacock Throne for himself, and, though this was not entirely appropriate for a foreign diplomat's wife, Sackville-West became deeply involved in the coronation of Reza Khan as the new Shah. Nicolson personally disliked Reza Khan, calling him "a bullet-headed man with the voice of an asthmatic child".
  Reza Khan disliked British influence in Iran, and after being crowned Shah, had submitted a "categorical note" that demanded the "removal of Indian Savars [mounted guards] from Persia". The Savars had been used to guard the British Legation in Tehran and various consulates across Persia, and Reza Khan felt having the troops of a foreign power marching down the streets of his capital was an infringement of Persian sovereignty. As the chargé d'affairs, Nicolson was in charge of the British Legation in the summer of 1926 and upon receiving the Iranian note, he rushed down to the Iranian Foreign Ministry to object. Nicolson writing in the third person stated he had a "Kipling inside him and something of an 'empire builder'" told the Persian officials that the note was "so categorical to be almost offensive" and wanted it withdrawn. The Persians stated that the note had been written by Reza Khan himself and could not be withdrawn, though ultimately an annex was added to the note, which softened its threatening tone, but much to the satisfaction of Reza Khan, the British had to abide by what Nicolson called a "frank and honest" note, withdrawing the Savars.
  
caption: From left to right: Harold Nicolson, Vita Sackville-West, Rosamund Grosvenor, Lionel Sackville-West in 1913
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