John Julius Norwich, Historian, Writer, Broadcaster

John Julius Norwich was born in 1929. He was educated at Upper Canada College, Toronto, at Eton, at the University of Strasbourg and, after a spell of National Service in the Navy, at New College, Oxford. In 1952 he joined the Foreign Service, where he remained for twelve years, serving at the embassies in Belgrade and Beirut and with the British Delegation to the Disarmament Conference at Geneva. In 1964 he resigned from the service in order to write.

His many and varied publications include two books on the medieval Norman Kingdom in Sicily, two travel books, Mount Athos (with Reresby Sitwell) and Sahara; The Architecture of Southern England; Glyndebourne; two anthologies of poetry and prose, Christmas Crackers and More Christmas Crackers; and A History of Venice. He is also the author of a three-volume history of the Byzantine Empire: Byzantium: The Early Centuries, Byzantium: The Apogee and Byzantium: The Decline and Fall.

On radio, Lord Norwich was for four years Chairman of the popular BBC panel game My Word, was a regular contestant in Round Britain Quiz and for three years presented the Evening Concert, six nights a week, on Classic FM. For television he has written and presented some thirty historical documentary films, on subjects which include the Fall of Constantinople, Napoleon’s Hundred Days, Cortes and Montezuma, The Antiquities of Turkey (a six-part series entitled The Gates of Asia), Maximilian of Mexico, Toussaint l’Ouverture of Haiti, the Knights of Malta and the Death of the Prince Imperial in the Zulu War. In 1985 he presented a series of three 50-minute programmes designed to complement the Treasure Houses of Britain exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, Washington. In 1990 he collaborated with the distinguished musicologist H.C. Robbins Landon on Maestro, a five-part series on the history of music in Venice over the past 500 years.

Lord Norwich is chairman of the Venice in Peril Fund, Co-chairman of the World Monuments Fund and a former member of the Executive Committee of the National Trust. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, the Royal Geographical Society and the Society of Antiquaries, and a Commendatore of the Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana. He was made a CVO in 1993.

Talks

John Julius Norwich is a regular lecturer on art history, architecture and music in Britain, North America and Europe. His talks are well illustrated, informative and accessible to a wide audience. Drawing on his own personal experiences, Lord Norwich’s obvious passion for art and architecture bring his subjects to life. He delivers them in a light-hearted, highly entertaining manner.

An Evening with John Julius Norwich

The celebrated historian, travel writer and broadcaster shares a personal view on the history, art and architecture of Venice, the Byzantine Empire and Sicily. He has separated fiction from fact and shed new light on some of the high points of human civilisation, in some of the world’s most evocative locations.

The Popes

After nearly 2,000 years of existence, the Papacy is the oldest absolute monarchy in the world. To some two billion people - a sixth of the population of the world - the Pope is the Vicar of Christ on Earth; to millions more, he is Antichrist. But Roman Catholicism began with Christianity itself; all the other 22,000 Christian religions are offshoots.

Speaking as an agnostic, with no religious axe to grind, the celebrated historian, travel writer and broadcaster traces the lives of some half-dozen of the most interesting - though by no means the most saintly - of those who have occupied the Throne of St Pete. From the Englishwoman Pope Joan - who never existed, though for centuries the Church steadfastly believed that she did - through the Borgias and the Medicis to the odiously anti-Semitic Pius XII and the possibly murdered John Paul I.

The Art & Architecture of Venice

How did Venice begin? Why should anyone build a city in the middle of a malarial lagoon? And how did it become not just a city, but also a republic that lasted over 1,000 years and a mighty Empire? Accompanied by a montage of Venetian churches, palaces and pictures through the ages, Lord Norwich talks about the phenomenon that is Venice.

The Art & Architecture of Byzantium

What was Byzantium? Its mystery and its magic, and the astonishing monuments and mosaics that still survive today.

The Norman Kingdom of Sicily

Few people know the extraordinary story of the other Norman Conquest - that of S. Italy and Sicily in the 11th and 12th centuries. The only time that the three great civilizations of the Mediterranean - Latin, Greek and Arab - all came together in harmony - and the astonishing monuments they left behind.

The English Country House

The development of this peculiarly English phenomenon down the centuries, from early castles to the great houses that are among the greatest achievements of our architecture.

Venice in the 19th century

After the fall of the Venetian Republic to Napoleon in 1797, the days of Venetian greatness were gone. Venice was passed backwards and forwards between France and Austria, until in the 1860s she finally became part of a united Italy. But the beauty and fascination remained, and attracted many of the greatest artistic and literary figures of Europe, including Byron, Ruskin, Henry James, Wagner and Browning. (The last two died in the city.)

The Antiquities of Turkey

No country in the world possesses such archaeological riches. Virtually every major civilization of Europe and the Near East has passed through Asia Minor and left its mark: Hittite, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Crusader, Armenian and Turkish. The subject of no less than 6 TV films made by JJN for the BBC in the 1970s.

The Duff Cooper Dairies (1915 – 1954)

The long awaited and highly revealing diaries of the politician, diplomat and socialite, told by his only son. If Duff Cooper’s name has dimmed in the fifty years since his death, publication of Lord Norwich’s latest book will bring him to the fore once again. Cooper was a first-rate witness of just about ‘every significant event from 1914 to 1950’ – as a young soldier at the end of WW1, as a politician during the General Strike of 1926, as a friend of Edward VIII at the time of Abdication, and as the British ambassador in Paris after the liberation in 1944. Lord Norwich’s talk brings Duff Cooper’s story to life, with an enthralling social edge!