

In 2015, he was awarded the Biographers' Club award for his lifetime service to biography.

In 1993, he was appointed CVO for having curated an exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum to mark the 40th anniversary of the Queen's accession to the throne. He wrote and presented more than 30 television documentaries including Maestro, The Fall of Constantinople, Napoleon's Hundred Days, Cortés and Montezuma, Maximilian of Mexico, The Knights of Malta, The Treasure Houses of Britain, and The Death of the Prince Imperial in the Zulu War. Norwich was the host of the BBC radio panel game My Word! from 1978 to 1982.

Robbins Landon wrote Five Centuries of Music in Venice. His books included The Normans in the South, A History of Venice, The Italian World, Venice: A Traveller's Companion, 50 Years of Glyndebourne: An Illustrated History, A Short History of Byzantium, Absolute Monarchs: A History of the Papacy, Sicily: An Island at the Crossroads of History, and A History of France. He was a historian, travel writer, and television personality. In 1964, he resigned from the Foreign Service to become a writer. In 1954, he inherited the title of Viscount Norwich. After graduation, he joined the Foreign Service and served in Belgrade, Beirut, and as a member of British delegation to the Disarmament Conference in Geneva. John Julius Norwich was born in London and served in the Royal Navy before receiving a degree in French and Russian at New College, Oxford.
