This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1962.
Victoria Mary, Lady Nicolson, CH, usually known as Vita Sackville-West, was an English author and garden designer.
Sir Harold George Nicolson was a British politician, diplomat, historian, biographer, diarist, novelist, lecturer, journalist, broadcaster, and gardener. His wife was the writer Vita Sackville-West.
Sissinghurst Castle Garden, at Sissinghurst in the Weald of Kent in England, was created by Vita Sackville-West, poet and writer, and her husband Harold Nicolson, author and diplomat. It is among the most famous gardens in England and is designated Grade I on Historic England's register of historic parks and gardens. It was bought by Sackville-West in 1930, and over the next thirty years, working with, and later succeeded by, a series of notable head gardeners, she and Nicolson transformed a farmstead of "squalor and slovenly disorder" into one of the world's most influential gardens. Following Sackville-West's death in 1962, the estate was donated to the National Trust. It was ranked 42nd on the list of the Trust's most-visited sites in the 2021–2022 season, with over 150,000 visitors.
Hawkhurst is a village and civil parish in the borough of Tunbridge Wells in Kent, England. The village is located close to the border with East Sussex, around 12 miles (19 km) south-east of Royal Tunbridge Wells and within the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
Adam Nicolson, is an English author who has written about history, landscape, great literature and the sea. He is also the 5th Baron Carnock, but does not use the title.
Nicolson is a patronymic surname meaning "son of Nicholas". There are alternate spellings. Notable people with the surname include:
Charles Raymond Bell Mortimer CBE, who wrote under the name Raymond Mortimer, was a British writer on art and literature, known mostly as a critic and literary editor.
Hidcote Manor Garden is a garden in the United Kingdom, located at the village of Hidcote Bartrim, near Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire. It is one of the best-known and most influential Arts and Crafts gardens in Britain, with its linked "garden rooms" of hedges, rare trees, shrubs and herbaceous borders. Created by Lawrence Johnston, it is owned by the National Trust and is open to the public.
Nigel Nicolson was an English writer, publisher and politician.
Sir John Baker (1488–1558) was an English politician. He served as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1545 to his death, having previously been Speaker of the House of Commons of England.
Evelyn Graham Irons was a Scottish journalist, the first female war correspondent to be decorated with the French Croix de Guerre.
Lionel Benedict Nicolson was a British art historian and author. He was the author of The Painters of Ferrara (1950) and Hendrick Terbrugghen (1958).
Sarah Clare Raven is an English gardener, cook and writer.
Dawn Langley Pepita Simmons was an English author and biographer. Born as Gordon Langley Hall, Simmons lived her first decades as a male. As a young adult, she became close to British actress Dame Margaret Rutherford, whom she considered an adoptive mother, and who was the subject of a biography Simmons wrote in later years.
Staplehurst is a town and civil parish in the borough of Maidstone in Kent, England, 9 miles (14 km) south of the town of Maidstone and with a population of 6,003. The village lies on the route of a Roman road, which is now incorporated into the course of the A229. The name Staplehurst comes from the Old English 'stapol' meaning a 'post, pillar' and 'hyrst', as a 'wooded hill'; therefore, 'wooded-hill at a post', a possible reference to a boundary marker at the position of All Saints' church atop the hill along the road from Maidstone to Cranbrook. The parish includes the hamlet of Hawkenbury.
Long Barn, located in the village of Sevenoaks Weald, Kent, is a Grade II* listed building and a Grade II* registered garden. Reputedly the birthplace of William Caxton, the house was later the home of Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson. During their ownership, the house is also notable for famous residents such as Douglas Fairbanks and Charles Lindbergh.
Antony Samuel King-Deacon was personal secretary to Sir Harold Nicolson, a fashion journalist for The Times, and later a gardening author and freelance journalist.
Pamela Schwerdt MBE was the joint head gardener at Sissinghurst Castle Garden from 1959 to 1990, and a pioneering horticulturalist.
Juliet Nicolson is a British author and journalist.
