PUBLISHER, politician and writer Nigel Nicolson has died at his home at Sissinghurst Castle, near Cranbrook, after a long illness.

He had been confined to bed since February, suffering from leukaemia. He was 87.

The younger son of diplomat, politician and biographer Harold Nicolson and of the novelist and poet Vita Sackville-West, Nigel Nicolson grew up in a world peopled by some of the most famous - and infamous - people of the age, the Bloomsbury set.

Both his parents had homosexual relationships outside their marriage, with his mother at one time eloping to France with long-term lover Violet Trefusis.

At 11, Nicolson acted as companion for Virginia Woolf, another of Vita's lovers, while she was writing Orlando, her fantasy about his mother.

Nicolson followed in his parents' literary footsteps, and perhaps his most famous work was Portrait of a Marriage, which analysed the complexities of his parents' unusual but enduring relationship, drawing on secret diaries kept by his mother.

But he also wrote widely on many other subjects - Kent, and the nation's country houses, being the topic of two of his works found on many of the county's coffee tables.

Educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford, Nicholson traveled extensively as a young man and before the war expressed some admiration for fascism having met both Mussolini in Rome and Goebbels in Berlin.

However, once war was declared, he served with distinction as a Captain in the Grenadier Guards, fighting in both the Tunisian and Italian Campaigns.

He later turned this experience to good use and wrote an acclaimed biography of Earl Alexander, General Montgomery's commander in chief.

After the war, Nicholson joined George (later Lord) Weidenfeld to found the publishing firm of Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

The business began slowly, but bloomed when the partners took the decision to publish Nabokov's Lolita - the controversial story of a 12-year-old seductress, that became a best-seller.

After two failed attempts, Nicolson was elected to Parliament in 1952 as the MP for Bournemouth East, which he represented until 1959, when he was de-selected by the town's constituency party in anger at his heavy criticism of Prime Minister Anthony Eden's Suez policy.

His mother died in 1962 and his father six years later, but returned to live at Sissinghurst Castle, which the pair had bought derelict and restored establishing particularly the gardens that have now made it a tourist attraction.

Nicolson continued to write himself and his books included works on Napoleon and Jane Austen.

He married Philippa Tennyson-d'Eyncourt in 1953 and the couple had three children: Juliet, Adam and Rebecca. The couple divorced in 1970.

Nicolson later travelled across America with Adam, and the two co-wrote their adventures as Two Roads To Dodge City.

Nicolson had an abiding passion for history and archeology and for many years was president of the Cranbrook History Society.

Dr John Beale, a friend and neighbour at Sissinghurst Castle, said: "Nigel was a fine man and a great friend of mine. He was devoted to his garden and to the promotion of Sissinghurst."

A funeral service is to be held at Sissinghurst Trinity Church on Wednesday (Sept 29).