Philip Sandeman Ziegler CVO FRSL (24 December 1929 – 22 February 2023) was a British biographer and historian.
Ziegler was born in Ringwood, Hampshire on 24 December 1929, the son of Louis Ziegler, an Army officer, and Dora Barnwell, a homemaker.[1] He was educated at St Cyprian's School, Eastbourne, and went with the school when it merged with Summer Fields School, Oxford.[citation needed] He attended Eton College and New College, Oxford, graduating in 1951 with a first class degree in Jurisprudence from Oxford before joining the British Foreign Service.[1][2] In the Foreign Service, he served in Vientiane where he worked with the US ambassador to Laos Charles W. Yost, Pretoria, and Bogotá, as well as with the Delegation to NATO in Paris.[3][2]
In 1967, he resigned from the Foreign Service, and joined the publishers Collins, which was, at the time, run by his father-in-law.[2] Originally intending to be a novelist, he began a career as biographer with his life of Talleyrand's lover, the Duchess of Dino. He was editor in chief at Collins from 1979 to 1980.[2] He was chosen as official biographer of Edward VIII, for which he was appointed CVO. Ziegler wrote for various journals and newspapers, including The Spectator, The Listener, The Times, The Daily Telegraph and History Today.[3]
In 1967, gunmen broke into Ziegler's family home in Bogotá and shot dead his wife, Sarah Collins. Ziegler was wounded in the attack.[2] Ziegler married social worker Mary Clare Charrington in 1971; she died in 2017.[2] Ziegler died from cancer on 22 February 2023, at the age of 93.[4]
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