John Julius Norwich at his London home in 2008. The historian was scrupulously congenial and self-deprecating
John Julius Norwich at his London home in 2008. The historian was scrupulously congenial and self-deprecating


The omens were favourable from the start. He was the only child of the society beauty Lady Diana Cooper and the highly accomplished diplomat, politician and philanderer Alfred Duff Cooper — good looks, brains and roguish charm were his by inheritance.
For a youthful John Julius Cooper (who would go on to be known as John Julius Norwich) this inheritance extended to exposure to a quite extraordinary line-up of the good and the great. When he met the diminutive, effeminate-voiced HG Wells — whose Russian mistress was on his arm — he wondered what women saw in him, and decided that it must be the honey smell of his breath.
He also had an encounter with Hilaire Belloc, helping him on with his cloak, only to discover that its pockets were full of flasks of alcohol. And as a 16-year-old in 1946 he watched Charles de Gaulle drop cigarette ash on to his half-eaten apple pie and, assuming that the general had had his fill, asked if he could finish it. “I said that it would be an honour for me to eat his cigarette ash — an appalling piece of over-the-top flattery, which I blush to recall.”