Adam Nicolson is the son of writer
Nigel Nicolson and his wife Philippa Tennyson-d'Eyncourt. He is the grandson of the writers
Vita Sackville-West and Sir
Harold Nicolson, and great-grandson of
Sir Eustace Tennyson d'Eyncourt and
Arthur Nicolson, 1st Baron Carnock. He was educated at
Eaton House,
Summer Fields School,
Eton College where he was a
King's Scholar, and
Magdalene College, Cambridge. He has worked as a journalist and columnist on the
Sunday Times, the
Sunday Telegraph, the
Daily Telegraph,
National Geographic Magazine and
Granta, where he is a contributing editor. He is a Fellow of the
Royal Society of Literature, the
Society of Antiquaries and the
Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. He is noted for his books
Sea Room (about the
Shiant Isles, a group of uninhabited islands in the
Hebrides); ''God's Secretaries: The Making of the
King James Bible; The Mighty Dead
(US title:Why Homer Matters
) exploring the epic Greek poems; The Seabird's Cry'' about the disaster afflicting the world's seabirds;
The Making of Poetry on the Romantic Revolution in England in the 1790s; and
Life Between the Tides, a boundary-crossing account of the tides in human and animal life. He has made several television series (with Keo Films) and radio series (with Tim Dee, the writer and radio producer) on a variety of subjects including the King James Bible, 17th-century literacy, Crete, Homer, the idea of Arcadia, the untold story of Britain's 20th-century whalers and the future of Atlantic seabirds. Between 2005 and 2009, in partnership with the
National Trust, Nicolson led a project which transformed the surrounding the house and garden at
Sissinghurst into a productive mixed farm, growing meat, fruit, cereals and vegetables for the National Trust restaurant. And between 2012 and 2017, together with the
RSPB, the
EU and
SNH, Nicolson and his son Tom were partners in a project to eradicate invasive predators from the Shiant Isles, Outer Hebrides, Scotland. In March 2018, the islands were declared rat-free. In December 2008 he succeeded his cousin
David Nicolson, 4th Baron Carnock, as 5th
Baron Carnock. ==Personal life==