John Julius Norwich

John Julius Cooper, 2nd Viscount Norwich, (15 September 1929 – 1 June 2018), also known as John Julius Norwich, was an English popular historian, writer of widely read travel books, and television personality.

Cooper was born in London in 1929, the son of the Conservative politician and diplomat Duff Cooper and the actress Diana Manners. He joined the British Foreign Service in 1952, serving in Yugoslavia and Lebanon and as a member of the British delegation to the Disarmament Conference in Geneva. On his father's death in 1954, he became the second Viscount Norwich. In 1964, Norwich left the diplomatic service to become a writer.

His 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). He also served as an 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.

Norwich also worked extensively in radio and television. He was the host of the BBC radio panel game My Word! for four years (1978–82) and was also a regional contestant on Round Britain Quiz. He wrote and presented about 30 television documentaries, including The Fall of Constantinople, Napoleon's Hundred Days, Cortés and Montezuma, The Antiquities of Turkey, The Gates of Asia, Maximilian of Mexico, Toussaint l'Ouverture of Haiti, The Knights of Malta, Treasure Houses of Britain, and The Death of the Prince Imperial in the Zulu War.

Biography Youth Norwich was born John Julius Cooper on 15 September 1929 at the Alfred House Nursing Home on Portland Place in Marylebone, London. He was the son of the Conservative politician and diplomat Duff Cooper, later Viscount Norwich, and Lady Diana Manners, a celebrated beauty and society figure. He was given the name "Julius" in part because he was born by caesarean section. His mother's fame as an actress and beauty attracted a crowd outside the nursing home and hundreds of letters of congratulations.

Cooper was educated at Egerton House School in Dorset Square, London, later becoming a boarder when the school was evacuated to Northamptonshire before the Second World War. Because his father, as Minister of Information, was high on the Nazi enemies list of British politicians, Cooper's parents feared for his safety in the event of a German invasion. In 1940, they decided to send him away after the US ambassador to Britain, Joseph P. Kennedy, offered to take him to the United States with other evacuee children on board the . Cooper attended Upper Canada College in Toronto, Canada, and spent his holidays with the family of William S. Paley on Long Island, New York. In 1942, he returned to Britain, where he attended Eton College. After the war, he studied at the University of Strasbourg while his father was ambassador to France.

Career After Oxford, Cooper joined the British Foreign Service. He served in Yugoslavia and Lebanon and as a member of the British delegation to the Disarmament Conference in Geneva. On his father's death in 1954, he inherited the title of Viscount Norwich, created for Duff Cooper in 1952. This gave him a right to sit in the House of Lords, which he lost with the House of Lords Act 1999.

In 1964, Norwich left the diplomatic service to become a writer. 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.

Norwich worked extensively in radio and television. He was host of the BBC radio panel game My Word! for four years (1978–82) and was a regional contestant on Round Britain Quiz. He wrote and presented about 30 television documentaries, including The Fall of Constantinople, Napoleon's Hundred Days, Cortés and Montezuma, The Antiquities of Turkey, The Gates of Asia, Maximilian of Mexico, Toussaint l'Ouverture of Haiti, The Knights of Malta, Treasure Houses of Britain, and The Death of the Prince Imperial in the Zulu War.

Norwich also worked for various charitable projects. He was the chairman of the Venice in Peril Fund, honorary chairman of the World Monuments Fund, a member of the General Committee of Save Venice, and a vice-president of the National Association of Decorative and Fine Arts Societies. He served for many years on the Executive Committee of the National Trust and also served on the board of the English National Opera. Norwich was also a patron of SHARE Community, which provides vocational training to disabled people.

Christmas Crackers Norwich compiled Christmas Crackers from whatever attracted him: letters, diaries, gravestones, poems, boastful Who's Who entries, indexes from biographies, and word games such as palindromes, holorhymes and mnemonics. He sometimes included untranslated Greek, French, Latin or German, as well as oddities such as a review from 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 corrected the final proofs from his hospital bed before he died.

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 lived for much of his life in a large detached Victorian house in Warwick Avenue in Little Venice, Maida Vale, London, close to Regent's Canal. He later downsized to a flat in nearby Bayswater.

Norwich died of heart failure on 1 June 2018, aged 88.

Titles, styles, honours and arms 1929–1952: John Julius Cooper 1952–1954: The Honourable John Julius Cooper 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.

Works Mount Athos (jointly with Reresby Sitwell), Hutchinson, 1966 The Normans in the South, 1016–1130, Longman, 1967. Also published by Harper & Row with the title The Other Conquest Sahara, Longman, 1968 The Kingdom in the Sun, 1130–1194, Longman, 1970. Great Architecture of the World, Littlehampton Book Services Ltd, 1975 Venice: The Rise to Empire, Allen Lane, 1977 Venice: The Greatness and Fall, Allen Lane, 1981 A History of Venice, Knopf, 1982 / Penguin, 1983 , single-volume combined edition Britain's Heritage (editor), HarperCollins, 1983 The Italian World: History, Art and the Genius of a People (editor), Thames & Hudson, 1983, Hashish (photographs by Suomi La Valle, historical profile by John Julius Norwich), Quartet Books, 1984, The Architecture of Southern England, Macmillan, 1985, Fifty Years of Glyndebourne, Cape, 1985, A Taste for Travel, Macmillan, 1985, Byzantium: The Early Centuries, Viking, 1988, Venice: a Traveller's Companion (an anthology compiled by Lord Norwich), Constable, 1990, 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) Byzantium; v. 2: The Apogee, Alfred A. Knopf, 1992, Byzantium; v. 3: The Decline and Fall, Viking, 1995, A Short History of Byzantium, Alfred A. Knopf, 1997, The Twelve Days of Christmas (Correspondence) (illustrated by Quentin Blake), Doubleday, 1998 (spoof of the old favourite carol, "The Twelve Days of Christmas") , Shakespeare's Kings: the Great Plays and the History of England in the Middle Ages: 1337–1485, New York: Scribner, 2000, Treasures of Britain (editor), Everyman Publishers, 2002, Paradise of Cities, Venice and its Nineteenth-century Visitors, Viking/Penguin, 2003, The Duff Cooper Diaries (editor), Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2006, The Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean, Doubleday, 2006, Trying to Please (autobiography), Wimborne Minster, Dovecote Press, 2008, Christmas Crackers (anecdotes, trivia and witticisms collected from history and literature) More Christmas Crackers The Big Bang: Christmas Crackers, 2000–2009, Dovecote Press, 2010, The Great Cities in History (editor), Thames and Hudson, 2009, Absolute Monarchs: A History of the Papacy, Random House, 2011, (US title for The Popes: A History) The Popes: A History, Chatto & Windus, 2011, (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, Darling Monster: The Letters of Lady Diana Cooper to Her Son John Julius Norwich (editor), Chatto & Windus, 2013, Cities That Shaped the Ancient World (editor), Thames and Hudson Ltd, 2014, Sicily: An Island at the Crossroads of History, Random House, 2015, Four Princes: Henry VIII, Francis I, Charles V, Suleiman the Magnificent and the Obsessions that Forged Modern Europe, John Murray, 2016, An English Christmas – all of the best writings about this most memorable time of year, gathered into one book – edited by John Julius Norwich, 2017 France: A History: from Gaul to de Gaulle, John Murray, 2018, A History of France, Atlantic Monthly Press, 2018, A Christmas Cracker being a commonplace selection, 2018,