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John Julius Cooper, 2nd Viscount Norwich, CVO (15 September 1929 – 1 June 2018), known as John Julius Norwich, was an English popular historian, travel writer, and television personality.
Biography
Youth
Norwich was born at the Alfred House Nursing Home on Portland Place in Marylebone, London, on 15 September 1929. He was the son of the Conservative politician and diplomat Duff Cooper, later Viscount Norwich, and of Lady Diana Manners, a celebrated beauty and society figure. He was given the name "Julius" in part because he was born by caesarean section. Such was his mother's fame as an actress and beauty that the birth attracted a crowd outside the nursing home and hundreds of letters of congratulations. Through his father, he was descended from King William IV and his mistress Dorothea Jordan.
In 1964, Norwich left the diplomatic service to become a writer. His subsequent books included histories of Sicily under the Normans (1967, 1970), Venice (1977, 1981), the Byzantine Empire (1988, 1992, 1995), the Mediterranean (2006) and the Papacy (2011), amongst others (see list below). He also served as editor of series such as Great Architecture of the World, The Italian World, The New Shell Guides to Great Britain, The Oxford Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Art and the Duff Cooper Diaries.
Christmas Crackers were compiled from whatever attracted Norwich: letters and diaries and gravestones and poems, boastful Who's Who entries, indexes from biographies, word games such as palindromes, holorhymes and mnemonics, occasionally in untranslated Greek, French, Latin, German or whatever language they were sourced from, as well as such oddities as a review from the American outdoors magazine Field and Stream concerning the republication of Lady Chatterley's Lover.
His final Christmas Cracker was the 49th. It was put together during the early part of 2018 and he corrected the final proofs from his hospital bed before he died on 1 June 2018.
Personal life and death
Norwich's first wife was Anne Frances May Clifford, daughter of the Hon. Sir Bede Clifford; they had one daughter, the Hon. Artemis Cooper, a historian, and a son, the Hon. Jason Charles Duff Bede Cooper, an architect. After their divorce, Norwich married his second wife, the Hon. Mary (Makins) Philipps, daughter of The 1st Baron Sherfield.
Norwich was also the father of Allegra Huston, born of his affair with the American ballet dancer Enrica Soma while she was married to the American film director John Huston.
1954–2018: The Right Honourable The Viscount Norwich
Norwich was appointed to the Royal Victorian Order as a Commander in 1992 by Elizabeth II, as part of the celebrations to mark the 40th anniversary of her accession.
Coat of arms of John Julius Norwich
Crest
On the Battlements of a Tower Argent a Bull passant Sable armed and unguled Or
Escutcheon
Or three Lions rampant Gules on a Chief Azure a Portcullis chained between two Fleurs-de-lis of the first
Supporters
On either side a Unicorn Argent gorged with a Collar with Chain reflexed over the back Or pendent from the collar of the dexter a Portcullis chained and from that of the sinister a Fleur-de-lys both Gold
Venice: a Traveller's Companion (an anthology compiled by Lord Norwich), Constable, 1990, ISBN978-0-09-467550-6
Oxford Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Art (editor) Oxford, 1990
The Normans in the South and The Kingdom in the Sun, on Norman Sicily, later republished as The Normans in Sicily, Penguin, 1992 (The Normans in the South, 1016–1130; originally published:- Harlow:Longman,1967—The Kingdom in the Sun, 1130–1194; originally published:- Harlow:Longman, 1970) ISBN978-0-14-015212-8
The Popes: A History, Chatto & Windus, 2011, ISBN978-0-09-956587-1 (UK title for Absolute Monarchs: A History of the Papacy)
A History of England in 100 Places: From Stonehenge to the Gherkin, John Murray, 2012, ISBN978-1-84854-609-7
Darling Monster: The Letters of Lady Diana Cooper to Her Son John Julius Norwich (editor), Chatto & Windus, 2013, ISBN978-0-7011-8779-8
Cities That Shaped the Ancient World (editor), Thames and Hudson Ltd, 2014, ISBN978-0-500-25204-8
Sicily: An Island at the Crossroads of History, Random House, 2015, ISBN978-0-8129-9517-6
Four Princes: Henry VIII, Francis I, Charles V, Suleiman the Magnificent and the Obsessions that Forged Modern Europe, John Murray, 2016, ISBN978-1-47363-295-0
^John Julius Norwich, ed. (2006). The Duff Cooper Diaries. Orion Books Ltd. p. x.
^Web of Stories-Life Stories of Remarkable People (19 June 2018). John Julius Norwich - Early school days. YouTube.com. Archived from the original on 12 December 2021. Retrieved 8 August 2020.
^Diana Cooper (1960). Trumpets from the Steep. Vintage Books. p. 40.
^This is a quotation from the Roman poet Catullus: Hamacher, Werner (2020). On the brink : language, time, history, and politics. London: Bowman and Littlefield. pp. 79–80. ISBN9781786603913.
Sources
Leaders & Legends: John Julius Norwich (In: Old Times; Winter/Spring, 2008)