Philip Ziegler


Philip Sandeman Ziegler was a British biographer and historian.

Background

Ziegler was born in Ringwood, Hampshire on 24 December 1929, the son of Louis Ziegler, an Army officer, and Dora Barnwell, a homemaker. He was educated at St Cyprian's School, Eastbourne, and went with the school when it merged with Summer Fields School, Oxford. He attended Eton College and New College, Oxford, graduating in 1951 with a first class degree in Jurisprudence from Oxford before joining the British Foreign Service. In the Foreign Service, he served in Vientiane where he worked with the US ambassador to Laos Charles W. Yost, Pretoria, and Bogotá, as well as with the Delegation to NATO in Paris.

Writing career

In 1967, he resigned from the Foreign Service and joined the publishers Collins, which was, at the time, run by his father-in-law. Originally intending to be a novelist, he began a career as biographer with his life of Talleyrand's lover, the Duchess of Dino. He was editor in chief at Collins from 1979 to 1980. He was chosen as official biographer of Edward VIII, for which he was later appointed CVO. Ziegler wrote for various journals and newspapers, including The Spectator, The Listener, The Times, The Daily Telegraph and History Today.

Personal life and death

In 1967, gunmen broke into Ziegler's family home in Bogotá and shot dead his wife, Sarah Collins. Ziegler was wounded in the attack. He then married social worker Mary Clare Charrington in 1971; she died in 2017.
Ziegler died from cancer on 22 February 2023, at the age of 93.

Works

Duchess of Dino on Princess Dorothea of CourlandAddington: A Life of Henry Addington, First Viscount Sidmouth The Black Death William IV of [the United Kingdom|King William IV] Omdurman Melbourne: a Biography of William Lamb 2nd Viscount Melbourne on Lord Melbourne the Prime MinisterCrown and People Diana Cooper Mountbatten. The Official Biography Elizabeth's Britain 1926 to 1986 Diaries of Lord Louis Mountbatten 1920–1922: Tours with the Prince of Wales editorPersonal Diary of Admiral the Lord Louis Mountbatten, South-East Asia, 1943–1946 The Sixth Great Power: Barings 1762–1929 From Shore to Shore – The Final Years: The Diaries of Earl Mountbatten of Burma 1953–1979 Edward VIII, the Official Biography Brooks's: A Social History editor with Desmond SewardWilson: The Authorised Life of Lord Wilson of Rievaulx on Harold WilsonLondon at War 1939–1945 Osbert Sitwell Britain Then and Now: The Francis Frith Collection Soldiers: Fighting Men's Lives, 1901–2001 Rupert Hart-Davis: Man of Letters Legacy: Cecil Rhodes, The Rhodes Trust and Rhodes Scholarships Edward Heath Olivier George VI : The Dutiful King
  • ''Between the Wars: 1919–1939''