Trying to Please

"Poor old baby, he's only trying to please." So said John Julius Norwich's nurse after his birth in 1929. That he has successfully lived up to her words is a tribute to an appetite for life allied to a remarkable gift for friendship.



John Julius Norwich's parents were Duff and Diana Cooper: the former a cabinet minister, his mother a famous beauty. In 1940, the 11-year-old John Julius was evacuated to Canada, returning two years later across an Atlantic full of U-boats. Wartime Eton followed. Then came the British Embassy in Paris, where his father was Britain's post-war ambassador. With his mother, John Julius watched French troops cross the Rhine under enemy fire and witnessed the Nuremberg Trials. National Service in the navy was followed by Oxford. In 1952, John Julius married and joined the Foreign Office, serving first in Belgrade and then in Beirut – inspired postings that sowed the seeds of his delight in the Byzantine and Ottoman worlds. 

After leaving the Foreign Office, John Julius found success as an author, television presenter and panellist on BBC radio Round Britain Quiz. A secret affair produced a daughter, placing an inevitable strain on his marriage. By the 1970s, he had a second wife, and a working year that combined writing, broadcasting and lecturing. 

Happily, Trying to Please is no mere list of achievements, but an engaging and often amusing account of its author's past that breathes fresh life into the worlds he describes.