Harold Acton
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Sir Harold Acton CBE |
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| Born |
5 July 1904 Villa La Pietra, Galluzzo, near Florence, Italy |
| Died | 27 February 1994 (aged 89) Villa La Pietra, Galluzzo |
| Occupation | poet; historical Writer |
| Language | English, Italian, French |
| Nationality | British |
| Ethnicity | Anglo-Italian |
| Alma mater | Oxford University |
| Notable works | The Last of the Medici (1930, 1932), Modern Chinese Poetry (with S.-H. Ch'en, 1936), Peonies and Ponies (1941, 1983), Memoirs of an Aesthete (1948), The [Last] Bourbons of Naples (1956, 1961), Ferdinando Galiani (1960), Florence (with M. Huerlimann, 1960), Nancy Mitford (1975), The Peach Blossom Fan (with S.-H. Ch'en, 1976) |
| Notable awards | knighthood (CBE), 1974 |
| Relatives | John Dalberg-Acton, Sir John Acton |
Sir Harold Mario Mitchell Acton CBE (5 July 1904 – 27 February 1994) was a British writer, scholar, and aesthete. He was born near Florence, Italy, of a prominent Anglo-Italian family. At Eton College, he was a founding member of the Eton Arts Society, before going up to Oxford to read Modern Greats at Christ Church. There he co-founded the avant garde magazine The Oxford Broom, and mixed with many intellectual and literary figures of the age, including Evelyn Waugh, who based the character of Anthony Blanche in Brideshead Revisited partly on him.
Between the wars, Acton lived between Paris, London, and Florence, proving most successful as a historian, his magnus opus being a 3-volume study of the Medicis and the Bourbons. He also wrote fiction, biography and autobiography. Moving to China, he studied Chinese language, traditional drama, and poetry, some of which he successfully translated. After serving as an RAF liaison officer in the Mediterranean, he returned to Florence, restoring his childhood home La Pietra to its earlier glory. Acton was knighted in 1974, and died in Florence, leaving La Pietra to New York University.
Acton was born into a prominent Anglo-Italian-American family at Villa La Pietra, his parents' house one mile outside the walls of Florence, Italy. He claimed that his great-great-grandfather was Commodore Sir John Acton, who was prime minister of Naples under Ferdinand IV, and grandfather of the Roman Catholic historian John Acton, but this has been disproved;
His father was the successful art collector and dealer Arthur Acton (1873–1953), the illegitimate son of Eugenio Acton. His mother Hortense Lenore Mitchell (1871–1962), was the heiress of John J. Mitchell, a President of the Illinois Trust and Savings Bank and an appointed member of the Federal Advisory Council, and a trustee of the Art Institute of Chicago (1908–1909). Arthur Acton met Hortense in Chicago while helping to design the Italianate features of the bank's new building in 1896, and the Mitchell fortune allowed Arthur Acton to buy the remarkable Villa La Pietra on the hills of Florence where Harold Acton lived for much of his life. The only modern furniture in the villa was in the nurseries, and that was disposed of when the children got older (Harold's younger brother William was born in 1906).
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