DIED. SIR HAROLD ACTON, 89, historian, writer and art collector; in Florence. A leading "dandy aesthete" in 1920s England, Acton inspired the character Anthony Blanche in his friend Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited. Acton wrote frequently on the history of Italy, where he owned La Pietra, an estate near Florence including acres of art, volume-packed libraries and five villas, which he left to New York University.