In Close Tandem? The Parallel Biographies of Harold Nicolson (1886–1968) and Allen Leeper (1887–1935)
In Close Tandem? The Parallel Biographies of Harold Nicolson (1886–1968) and Allen Leeper (1887–1935)

Summary/Abstract: This paper explores the parallels between the careers of Harold Nicolson and Allen Leeper. Though far away at birth, they were soon linked by their university years and then by their service in the British Foreign Office, which in 1919 saw them both posted to Paris for the Peace Conference: They worked in the office room 108 of the Astoria Hotel, processing and organizing the vast amount of material relating to the Danube and Balkan border disputes, as two of the most valuable and tireless assistants to Sir Eyre Crowe, the British Under-Secretary ofState. Drawing on primary sources, this paper examines their influence as Czechoslovak, Romanian, and Yugoslav Commissioners on the shaping of future borders, and then highlights their later self-reflections on their activities in 1919. Finally, the present paper seeks to explore whether it is proper to judge their activities, as is otherwise generally accepted in Hungarian historiography, as equally damaging to Hungarian interests.

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