John Julius Norwich was born in 1929. He was educated in Canada, at Eton, at the University of Strasbourg, and at Oxford, where he took a degree in French and Russian. In 1952 he joined the Foreign Service and remained in it for twelve years, serving at the embassies in Belgrade and Beirut and with the British delegation to the Disarmament Conference at Geneva. In 1964 he resigned from service in order to write.

Among other works, he has published A History of Venice, A Taste for Travel, and two volumes on the medieval Norman kingdom in Sicily. Lord Norwich, Chairman of the Venice in Peril Fund, is an active member of the House of Lords.