The son of Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson tells his own story of soldiering, publishing, politics and authorship.

Nigel Nicolson grew up in the world of Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsberries, one of three sons of the unconventional parents, MP Harold Nicolson and his bisexual wife, the author Vita Sackville-West.

In these memoirs he offers a fresh perspective on their marriage as seen from the viewpoint of one of their children, tells how his twenties were, like others of his generation, subsumed by the second world war (he served in the Grenadier Guards in North Africa), and covers his later life as an MP and full-time writer and publisher with great insight and style.

Nigel Nicolson, the younger son of Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West, was a publisher, a Member of Parliament, an editor (including six volumes of Virginia Woolf's letters and three of his father's diaries) and the author of many books on history, politics, architecture and literature. He lived at the family home, Sissinghurst Castle in Kent, now a property of the National Trust, until his death in 2004.