Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson’s days in Istanbul probably mark the most conventional period in the history of a notoriously unconventional marriage. It was Harold’s posting as third secretary at the British Embassy in Istanbul that had led the young couple, a fledgling poet of twenty and a promising diplomat of twenty-eight, to leave London for the Levant. Their marriage had just taken place in the chapel at Knole, the Elizabethan stately home of the Sackvilles, deep in the Kent countryside, where Vita had spent her childhood.