John Julius Cooper, 2nd Viscount Norwich
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The Right Honourable The Viscount Norwich CVO |
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| Member of the House of Lords | |
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In office 1 January 1954 – 11 November 1999 as a hereditary peer |
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| Preceded by | Duff Cooper, 1st Viscount Norwich |
| Succeeded by | House of Lords Act 1999 |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 15 September 1929 |
| Died | 1 June 2018 (aged 88) |
| Spouse(s) | Anne Clifford (divorced) Hon. Mary Makins Philipps |
| Children | 3, including Artemis Cooper and Allegra Huston |
| Parents |
Duff Cooper Lady Diana Manners |
| Education |
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| Alma mater | |
| Occupation | Historian, travel writer, television personality |
John Julius Cooper, 2nd Viscount Norwich, CVO (15 September 1929 – 1 June 2018), known as John Julius Norwich, was an English popular historian, travel writer and television personality.
Norwich was the son of Conservative politician and diplomat Duff Cooper, later Viscount Norwich, and of Lady Diana Manners, a celebrated beauty and society figure. Through his father, he was 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 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 his father, 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. His subsequent books included histories of Sicily under the Normans (1967, 1970), Venice (1977, 1981), Byzantium (1988, 1992, 1995), the Mediterranean (2006), and the Papacy (2011), amongst others (see list below). 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. Viscount Norwich has often contributed to Cornucopia, a magazine devoted to the history and culture of Turkey.
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