Nicholas Coleridge

Nicholas David Coleridge CBE (born 4 March 1957) is chairman of the Victoria and Albert Museum, chairman of the Prince of Wales' Campaign for Wool and chairman of the Gilbert Trust for the Arts. He is an ambassador for the Landmark Trust and a patron of the Elephant Family. [2]

Nicholas Coleridge
Nicholas Coleridge
Born
Nicholas David Coleridge

(1957-03-04) 4 March 1957
NationalityUnited Kingdom
EducationEton College
Alma materTrinity College, Cambridge
OccupationChairman of Condé Nast Britain [1] Chairman, The Victoria and Albert Museum

From 1989–2019, he was successively editorial director of Condé Nast Britain, managing director, Condé Nast Britain (1991–2017), vice president, Condé Nast International (2000–2012) and president, Condé Nast International, the division of Condé Nast which publishes 139 magazines in 27 international markets, and over 100 websites. British Condé Nast publishes numerous titles including Vogue, Vanity Fair, House & Garden, Tatler, The World of Interiors, Condé Nast Traveller, Glamour, GQ, Brides, Wired, Love and GQ Style, as well as owning the Johansens hotel guides and the Condé Nast College of Fashion and Design. From 2017-2019, he was chairman of Condé Nast Britain.

He has been chairman of the Victoria and Albert Museum since 2015, having been a trustee from 2012–2015.[3][4] He has been chairman of the Campaign for Wool since 2013 (deputy chair 2008–2013).

Life and career

Coleridge was born in London, the son of David Coleridge, who was chairman of Lloyd's of London in the late 1980s, and descended from a brother of poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge.[5] He is the eldest of three brothers, and educated at Ashdown House, Eton College[6] and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied theology and history of art; however, due to a back injury, he was not able to sit his finals.[7] As an Eton schoolboy, he won the Jeremy Thorpe Cup for debating with his school friend Craig Brown, though the trophy was later re-named when Thorpe's reputation fell under a shadow.

He has written fourteen books,[8] both fiction and non-fiction, based largely upon either his professional life (The Fashion Conspiracy, Paper Tigers, With Friends Like These) or social novels (A Much Married Man, Godchildren, Deadly Sins, The Adventuress). The Fashion Conspiracy was the Number One bestseller, hardback non-fiction (The Times, March 4, 1988). His autobiography, titled The Glossy Years : Magazines, Museums and Selective Memoirs published September 2019 by Penguin Fig Tree, was #No 1 in Art Books, #No 1 in Fashion Books, #No 1 in Showbiz Biography. It was described by The Sunday Times as “the most entertaining book of the year”.

He has been chairman of the PPA – the magazine publishers' association – and chairman of the British Fashion Council. He was founding chairman of Fashion Rocks, the fashion and rock music extravaganza, which raised more than £3 million for the Prince's Trust charity. He was on the advisory board for the Concert for Diana, Wembley Stadium 2007. He has been a member of the Council of the Royal College of Art, and a member of the trading board of the Prince's Trust. He was a director of PressBof,[9] the parent organisation of the Press Complaints Commission, 2007-2014.

While on assignment making a television documentary about Tamil terrorism in Sri Lanka in 1984, he was arrested and jailed for ten days in Welikada prison, Colombo, where he embarked upon writing a collection of short stories, 'How I Met My Wife'.

As a journalist, he has been an irregular contributor to The Daily Telegraph, Sunday Telegraph, The Spectator and the Financial Times. In 1976, between school and university, he was a cub reporter on the Falmouth Packet newspaper in Cornwall. From 1979-1982 he was Associate Editor of the Tatler, working for then editor Tina Brown; from 1982–85 he was a columnist at the Evening Standard; 1986–1989 he was editor of Harpers & Queen magazine, a Hearst title, before joining Condé Nast.

In 2002 he suggested that the then Sunday Times fashion editor, Colin McDowell, was habitually too negative about British fashion designers.[10] This drew criticism from McDowell, who accused Coleridge of jingoism.[10]

He was described by Campaign magazine in 2012 as “magazines' most compelling advocate for almost two decades”.[11]

Personal life

He is married to the healer and author Georgia Metcalfe and has four children, Alexander, Freddie, Sophie and Tommy. They live in Chelsea, London, and in Worcestershire. The December 2007 issue of Condé Nast's World of Interiors magazine contains a feature on his country house, the 1709 Wolverton Hall in Worcestershire. In 2019, he commissioned a garden Folly, a 46 foot writing tower, in a Tudor-Georgian-Jacobean style, by the architect Quinlan Terry.

He has seven godchildren, and his novel Godchildren was dedicated to them. Two of the godchildren, Cara Delevingne and Edie Campbell, are now well known British models.[12] Another of his godchildren, journalist Ned Donovan, became engaged to Princess Raiyah bint Al Hussein of Jordan, in 2019.

Awards

He was the 1982 British Press Awards Young Journalist of the Year, as a columnist at the Evening Standard, and was given the Mark Boxer Lifetime Achievement Award for magazine journalism by the British Society of Magazine Editors in 2001. In 2013, he was awarded the Marcus Morris Lifetime Achievement Award for publishing by the Professional Publishers Association (PPA). In June 2017, he was inducted into the Professional Publishers Association's Hall of Fame by Lord Heseltine. In May 2018 he was awarded the lifetime “Outstanding Contribution to British Media” Prize at the British Media Awards.

He is the only person ever to be awarded all four of the Publishing industry’s Lifetime Achievement Awards.

Coleridge was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2009 Birthday Honours.[13]

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References
  1. Nicholas Coleridge's pay jumps to £1.3m as Condé Nast UK's profits double Guardian. June 13, 2016
  2. Londoner's Diary: V&A upstages the Serpentine summer bash Evening Standard. June 13, 2016
  3. Coleridge, Nicholas David Bowie Changed My Life Vanity Fair. June 13, 2016
  4. http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/t/trustees/
  5. Nicholas Coleridge Q&A at Orion Publishing Group
  6. http://www.etoncollege.com/FamousOEs.aspx
  7. "Interview". Independent. 12 January 1998.
  8. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Nicholas-Coleridge/e/B001IQUO7O
  9. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 16 October 2013. Retrieved 8 October 2013.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  10. Cartner-Morley, Jess (18 February 2002). "A fractious start to London fashion week". The Guardian. Retrieved 17 September 2019.
  11. Alastair Reid "All About ... Magazine industry consolidation", Campaign, 16 February 2012
  12. Godchildren Dedication Page – Google Books
  13. "No. 59090". The London Gazette (Supplement). 13 June 2009. p. 7.
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