 He was the son of Francis Morgan Nichols, an editor and writer, and was descended from John Nichols printer and writer author of "Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century".He was educated at Winchester College and Balliol College, Oxford.He had two sons, Robert Nichols, poet and dramatist, and Philip Nichols, a civil servant, and two daughters, Irene, who married Sir George Gater, and Anne, married to Henry Strauss, 1st Baron Conesford.