This biography of Richard M. Nixon is published to coincide with his 80th birthday on 9th January 1993. Jonathan Aitken first got to know Richard Nixon in about 1974, when, newly-elected to Parliament, he visited Nixon in the nadir of his exiled misery at San Clemente six months after his resignation as President of the United States. Four years later he was Nixon's unofficial aide when he visited England to address the Oxford Union. The initial reaction was mixed - frosty from the Foreign Office and James Callaghan's Labour government, warm from Harold Wilson, Margaret Thatcher (then Leader of the Opposition) and Speaker George Thomas. In the end, Nixon's visit was a triumph. Nixon also addressed other gatherings and won over doubters with his tour d'horizon on foreign affairs. Jonathan Aitken's Nixon is written with Nixon's agreement and with access to previously closed private papers going back to his early and impoverished days in California in the 1930s. It is at times critical of its subject, but also sympathetic.