The younger son of Harold Nicholson and Vita SackvilleWest, two of the most repetitiously celebrated members of the Bloomsbury Set, Nigel Nicolson, at the age of eighty, reviews his life with vigour, candour and charm. He fully appreciates all his privileges, from Eton to retirement in Sissinghurst Castle in Kent, with seven National Trust gardeners grooming the estate at no cost to himself. At the same time, while recalling his achievements, as a wartime officer and historian of the Grenadier Guards, as a Member of Parliament, as a publisher in partnership with George Weldenfeld (they published Lolita, in spite of attempts to censor it), and as an author and lecturer at home and abroad, all without boastfulness or false modesty, he acknowledges occasional failures, such as the break-up of his marriage, for which he takes more than half the blame. He is a polished stylist, a master of plain English, and a raconteur with a gentle sense of humour. The diehard Tories of his Bournemouth constituency forced him out of the House of Commons for opposing Eden's Suez venture. P.S.C.