A great historian for non-scholars - John Julius Norwich

John Julius Cooper (1929-2018) was the son of a society woman and a special political dynamo. His mum, Lady Diana Man­ners Cooper (died 1986), was a daug­h­ter of the Duke of Rutland. She was a society beauty, actress, hostess and a member of English Club of aristocrats and intellectuals called The Coterie. Lady Diana sent her only child to the USA and to school in Canada during the war for safety, then brought him back to Eton.

His father was Duff Cooper (d1954). Duff resign­ed from the For­eign Office to become a Conservative MP, and resigned again as 1st Lord of the Admiralty after the Munich Agreement in 1938. A favourite of Sir Winston Churchill, he became Minister for Information, and amb­assador to Paris during the war. In Jan 1944 Duff became Britain’s rep to General de Gaulle’s French Committee in Algiers — going on immediately after the lib­er­ation of Paris as Britain’s first post-war ambassador. In 1945 he was asked to stay on by Clement Attlee’s Labour government.

When his father became ambassador, JJ led a very different life. Holidays were always spent in France! The Hôtel de Charost on the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré was a very beautiful embassy; it had been owned by Napoleon’s sister Pauline Borghese and later by the Duke of Wellington.

Appropriately the Coopers met the Duke and Duchess of Windsor at the British Embassy in Paris in 1946. When they left the embassy at the end of that year, France had become JJ’s permanent home.

In 1947, while waiting to join the British Navy, JJ also spent 6 months living with a lovely Alsatian family in Strasbourg, att­ending lectures in German & Russian at Strasbourg Uni. On the 3rd anniversary of the D-Day landings, at commemor­ative serv­ices on the beach, JJ’s father introduced him to the General de Gaulle.

JJ was taken to the Nuremburg trials, and the unique atmosphere in the Paris embassy introduced him to high politics. When JJ joined the Navy as a national serviceman, Lady Diana introduced her son to everyone who counted: Lord Beav­er­brook was John Julius’s godfather; Winston Chur­ch­ill came to dinner; HG Wells popped in to socialise. And she introduced him to Pope Pius XII.

A History of Venice, 1982

Byzantium, 1992

After National Service, John Julius Norwich took a degree in French and Russian at New College, Oxford. Then he followed his father’s path into the Foreign Office in 1952.

When JJ was about to take up his first overseas post, Lady Diana tried to persuade the foreign secretary Sir Anthony Eden to send her son to Paris. But in this instance, he became 3rd secretary in Belgrade instead. Then he served as 2nd Secretary in Beirut until 1960. Then he worked with the British Delegation to the Disarmament Conference at Geneva. From there JJ began to explore the Middle and Near East, whose history fascinated him for so many years.

With Duff Cooper's death in 1954, the young man inherited the title of Viscount Norwich, created for his father only 2 years earlier. This allowed him to sit in the House of Lords as Lord Nor­wich. But after an unrew­ard­ing period "locking him inside Whitehall", he resigned from Foreign Office in 1964.

History Books

The 2nd Viscount Norwich abandoned his diplomatic career to become a cultural commentator and a successful, pop­ular historian. During his travels, John Julius had been excited to learn of the history of the Normans in Sicily. He appointed a literary agent and a publisher, and wrote his first proper book, in two volumes. BBC TV must have liked the work because they chose him as a suitable presenter for historical and archaeological features.

Over the years JJ authored histories of Norman Sicily, the Republic of Venice, Byzantine Empire, Mediter­ranean Sea, papacy, Sicily and France. He also wrote on architecture, music and the history plays of Shakespeare and presented many historical documentaries on BBC Television.

Like other popular historians, JJ con­cen­trated on telling a good story. He didn't use obscure scholarly lang­uage, did not try to be cont­rov­ersial and focused on fasc­in­ating events & personalities. The Norwich books that I recom­mended most often to students were A History of Venice 1982; Middle Sea: History of the Med­it­erranean 2007  and Absolute Monarchs: History of the Papacy 2011.

Besides writing 25 books, JJ became a TV docum­entary maker, radio panelist, lecturer and chairman of cul­tural organis­at­ions. His charm and diplomatic manner were learned during his 15 years in the Foreign Office. 

While writing, JJ also made time for his causes. The most public of these was his loved Venice. Invited to become chair of Venice in Peril in 1970, he campaigned to save church interiors and architectural monuments, rem­ain­ing a tolerant observ­er of dodgy Venet­ian and Italian politics. He sat on the executive committee of the National Trust for 35 years, wrote a guide to the best of English architect­ure & became chairman of the World Monuments Fund. Lord Norwich was also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Liter­at­ure and the Royal Geographical Society. And as a music lover, he was on the board of the English National Opera.

In 1952 Viscount Norwich married Anne Clifford, daughter of the Hon Sir Bede Edmund Hugh Clifford. They had a daughter, historian Hon Artemis Cooper, and a son, archit­ect the Hon Jason Charles Duff Cooper. In 1989 JJ married the Hon Mollie Phil­ipps, daughter of 1st Baron Sherfield. His other dau­ghter Alleg­ra, who became a script­ writer.

The Great Cities in History, 2009

The Popes, 2012

I liked the obituary-writer who noted in June 2018 that the late Lord Norwich had specialised in the democratic art of elucidating the past to the commit­ted, but not scholarly history reader. Patrician yes, but a people’s historian.