Vita Sackville-West would have inherited Knole were it not for a "technical accident": the fact that she had been born a woman, a piece of bad luck that she tried hard to compensate for. Both she and her husband, Harold Nicolson, were homosexual. Vita was a novelist, great friend of Virginia Wolf, the inspiration for her novel Orlando, but her passion was gardening. Harold was a minor diplomat, a minor politician and a minor writer but he survives, thanks to his discipline. Every day, before adjourning, no matter how late it was or how much he had had to drink, he sat at his typewriter and accounted for his day. His diaries, spanning decades, are a priceless record of english history, disguised as gossip. Together they bought Sissinghurst, an old Tudor Castle and made it their home. Nigel Nicolson, their son, disclosed their secrets in "Portrait of a Marriage".
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