Robert Nichols

Notable Works

• Dawn on the Somme (poem)
• Wings Over Europe (1928)
• Fisbo, or the Looking Glass Loaned (1934) verse satire aimed at Osbert Lancaster

About

Robert Malise Bowyer Nichols was born on 6 September 1893, the son of the poet John Bowyer Buchanan Nichols. He was educated at Winchester and Trinity College, Oxford and commissioned into the Royal Field Artillery in 1914, where he served on the Western Front at Loos and the Somme. After being invalided home with shell shock in August 1917, Nichols began to give poetry readings and was a protégé of Edith Sitwell and long-term friend of Aldous Huxley. He joined a British Council tour of the USA in 1918, reading his war poetry. He married Norah Denny in 1922 at St-Martin-in-the-Fields and was a Professor of English Literature at the University of Tokyo from 1921-1924.

Nichols’ play Wings over Europe (1928) was a Broadway hit. His short fictions, The Smile of the Sphinx and Golgotha & co., were collected in the book Fantastica. He published six volumes of poetry, including Fisbo, or the Looking Glass Loaned (1934), a verse satire aimed at Osbert Lancaster. He lived in Germany and Austria from 1933-34, and in the south of France until June 1940. He died aged 51 in 1944 and is buried at St Mary’s Church, Lawford, next to his family home, Lawford Hall. On 11^th November 1985, Nichols was among 16 Great War poets commemorated on a slate slab unveiled in Westminster Abbey’s Poet’s Corner.

Legacy

His gift of Copyright to the RLF from his literary estate helps support future generations of writers.