Felix Hope-Nicholson


Felix Otho Victor Gabriel John Adrian Hope-Nicholson was a British aristocrat and genealogist. The Herald of Scotland called him a "tall, imposing figure known as the Squire of Chelsea, and noted that after attending Eton College and the war he had "dedicated his life to the greater glory of his ancestors, in particular the Linlithgow family and the Hopes of Hopetoun House."
The son of Hedley Hope-Nicholson, a barrister, head of the Society of King Charles the Martyr and heir to a raincoat fortune, in his young years Felix Hope-Nicholson was a notable figure in high society in London, and was often seen socialising at The Ritz. During an air raid during World War II, in a drunken state, he tripped and fell on King Zog of Albania, who was staying at the hotel at the time. By the 1970s he was described as "impoverished", but successfully kept up the appearance of a "bachelor dandy". He lived for a period at More House on Tite Street. Hope-Nicholson was a friend of Francis Bacon and Hamish Erskine, a "notoriously vain, rather silly and extremely amusing" homosexual, unofficially engaged to Nancy Mitford until Erskine ended the relationship.