Hedley Hope-Nicholson

Hedley Hope-Nicholson, littérateur and his wife Jacqueline Hope were identities in English artistic and literary circles in the first half of the twentieth century. Hedley Nicholson (he joined his patronymic with that of his wife by deed-poll) counted amongst various eccentric hobbies a keen interest in King Charles I and was editor of the quarterly magazine of the Society of King Charles the Martyr. He kept a relic from the King's coffin and a piece of the shirt he wore on the scaffold in a box in the consecrated chapel in their London family home, More House, in Tite Street, Chelsea. His other great passion was for the Russian ballet. He was the author of The Mindes Delight: Or Variety of Memorable Matters Worthy of Observation (1928).

Jacqueline Hope-Nicholson was a genealogist, heraldic artist and impassioned costumier dealing with vast outdoor pageants and innumerable amateur theatricals but her greatest interest was in the Stuart kings, largely Charles II.

Their children included the artist Lauretta (born 1919) who also married the artist Jean Hugo in 1949, and Marie-Jacqueline, who compiled Brian Howard: Portrait of a Failure in 1968, about Brian Howard.