Regularly, customers asked for a book on Greenwich, and there was none. After all, Elizabeth I was born there. The Observatory is known all over the world; the Royal Naval College is there. So I decided to do it. Nigel Hamilton Read Quote
I’m fascinated by the concept of what I call ‘clusters of creativity’: the Brontes, the Waughs, families with several geniuses. I’m one of four; competition among siblings has to be a factor. Nigel Hamilton Read Quote
Both JFK and George W. Bush were the sons of wealthy U.S. ambassadors and thus privileged to meet distinguished figures, to travel, and to see the world and think about its problems if they chose. Nigel Hamilton Read Quote
I belong to the Boston Biographers Group – and get my monthly ‘fix’ from them. Where else can I sit down for two hours with people who understand the challenge I face, daily, as a life-chronicler? Nigel Hamilton Read Quote
My father had risen in the British Army under the revolutionary aegis of General Montgomery, who was mad about training for battle, not muddling into disaster. Nigel Hamilton Read Quote
My father had left school at 18, without enough money to go to college – and, with four sons after the war, said he could still not afford to do so. Nigel Hamilton Read Quote
It must have been the fall of 1952 when my father returned to London sporting a neck tie emblazoned with the words ‘I Like Ike.’ Nigel Hamilton Read Quote
Some of the History Channel’s documentaries involve docudrama segments and are highly speculative – but there seems, on the part of the producers, to be a real determination to get at the history behind our past – not the sex, which is left to drama shows and entertainment channels. Nigel Hamilton Read Quote
For the serious biographer, history and the life story of a real individual are inseparably intertwined. Get the facts wrong, or distort them, and the life story gets distorted: becomes fiction. Nigel Hamilton Read Quote
