John Julius Cooper
|
The Right Honourable The Viscount Norwich CVO |
|
|---|---|
| Member of the House of Lords | |
|
In office 1 January 1954 – 11 November 1999 as a hereditary peer |
|
| Preceded by | Duff Cooper, 1st Viscount Norwich |
| Succeeded by | House of Lords Act 1999 |
| Personal details | |
| Born | September 15, 1929 |
| Education |
|
| Alma mater | |
| Occupation | Historian, travel writer and television personality |
John Julius Cooper, 2nd Viscount Norwich, CVO (born 15 September 1929), known as John Julius Norwich, is an English popular historian, travel writer and television personality.
Norwich is the son of the Conservative politician and diplomat Duff Cooper and of Lady Diana Manners, a celebrated beauty and society figure. Through his father, he is descended from King William IV and his mistress Dorothea Jordan.
He was educated at Upper Canada College, Toronto, Canada (as a wartime evacuee), Eton, and the University of Strasbourg. He served in the Royal Navy before taking a degree in French and Russian at New College, Oxford.
Joining the British Foreign Service after Oxford, John Julius Cooper served in Yugoslavia and Lebanon and as a member of 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, though he lost this right with the House of Lords Act 1999.
In 1964, Viscount Norwich left the diplomatic service to become a writer. Apart from his many books (see list), he has 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. Viscount Norwich has often contributed to Cornucopia, a magazine devoted to the history and culture of Turkey.
...
Wikipedia