James Lees-Milne was an English writer and expert on country houses. He was an architectural historian, novelist, and a biographer. He is also remembered as a
diaristA diary is a record with discrete entries arranged by date reporting on what has happened over the course of a day or other period. A personal diary may include a person's experiences, and/or thoughts or feelings, including comment on current events outside the writer's direct experience. Someone...
.
Biography
Lees-Milne came from a prosperous manufacturing family and grew up in Wickhamford,
WorcestershireWorcestershire is a non-metropolitan county, established in antiquity, located in the West Midlands region of England. For Eurostat purposes it is a NUTS 3 region and is one of three counties that comprise the "Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Warwickshire" NUTS 2 region...
. He attended
Lockers Park SchoolLockers Park School is a day and boarding preparatory school for 140 boys, situated in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire. Each year it sends boys to the main public schools in the UK, including Harrow, Eton, Radley, Bradfield and Rugby. Its current headmaster is David Farquharson.-History:Lockers Park...
in
HertfordshireHertfordshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England. The county town is Hertford.The county is one of the Home Counties and lies inland, bordered by Greater London , Buckinghamshire , Bedfordshire , Cambridgeshire and...
,
EtonEton College, often referred to simply as Eton, is a British independent school for boys aged 13 to 18. It was founded in 1440 by King Henry VI as "The King's College of Our Lady of Eton besides Wyndsor"....
and
Oxford UniversityThe University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...
. From 1931 to 1935, he was Private Secretary to
George Lloyd, 1st Baron Lloyd of Dolobran.
In 1936 he was appointed secretary of the Country House Committee of the
National TrustThe National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, usually known as the National Trust, is a conservation organisation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland...
; he held that position until 1950, apart from a period of military service from 1939-1941. During that time he was a regular contributor to the Trust's member
newsletterNational Trust Magazine is the members’ publication of National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty. With a readership of 3.76 million it currently has the sixth highest magazine circulation in Britain...
, penning various features. He was instrumental in the first large-scale transfer of country houses from private ownership to the Trust. After resigning his full-time position in 1950, he continued his connection with the National Trust as a part-time architectural consultant and member of committees.
Lees-Milne was visiting
Diana MosleyDiana Mitford, Lady Mosley , was one of Britain's noted Mitford sisters. She was married first to Bryan Walter Guinness, heir to the barony of Moyne, and secondly to Sir Oswald Mosley, 6th Baronet, of Ancoats, leader of the British Union of Fascists; her second marriage, in 1936, took place at the...
when King Edward VIII abdicated. His visit there was to examine the seventeenth-century house she and her husband Sir Oswald Mosley were then renting; he recorded later how he and Diana (her husband was in London) had listened to the King's broadcast abdication speech with tears running down their faces. He had loved her brother Tom Mitford at Eton, and was devastated when Tom was killed in action in Burma in 1945.
He married
Alvilde ChaplinAlvide Bridges Chaplin Lees-Milne, formerly Viscountess Chaplin was a British gardening and landscape expert.-Personal life:Chaplin and James Lees-Milne, who became her second husband, met during World War II, while she was involved in an affair with the arts patron Winnaretta de Polignac, and by...
, formerly Bridges, a prominent gardening and landscape expert, in 1951. Alvilde Lees-Milne died in 1994. Both Lees-Milne and Alvilde were bisexual, and for a period Alvilde had
lesbianLesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...
affairs with
Vita Sackville-WestThe Hon Victoria Mary Sackville-West, Lady Nicolson, CH , best known as Vita Sackville-West, was an English author, poet and gardener. She won the Hawthornden Prize in 1927 and 1933...
and the wealthy
Winnaretta SingerWinnaretta Singer, Princesse Edmond de Polignac was an American musical patron and heir to the Singer sewing machine fortune.-Early Life and Family:...
, among others.
After a period at Alderley Edge in
CheshireCheshire is a ceremonial county in North West England. Cheshire's county town is the city of Chester, although its largest town is Warrington. Other major towns include Widnes, Congleton, Crewe, Ellesmere Port, Runcorn, Macclesfield, Winsford, Northwich, and Wilmslow...
, and a brief sojourn in Bath, he and Alvilde resided in their later years after 1974 at Essex House on the
BadmintonBadminton House is a large country house in Gloucestershire, England, and has been the principal seat of the Dukes of Beaufort since the late 17th century, when the family moved from Raglan Castle, which had been ruined in the English Civil War...
estate, also in Gloucestershire, while he worked most days in
William Thomas BeckfordWilliam Thomas Beckford , usually known as William Beckford, was an English novelist, a profligate and consummately knowledgeable art collector and patron of works of decorative art, a critic, travel writer and sometime politician, reputed to be the richest commoner in England...
's library at Lansdown Crescent. He was a friend of many of the most prominent British intellectual and social figures of his day, including
Nancy MitfordNancy Freeman-Mitford, CBE , styled The Hon. Nancy Mitford before her marriage and The Hon. Mrs Peter Rodd thereafter, was an English novelist and biographer, one of the Bright Young People on the London social scene in the inter-war years...
,
Harold NicolsonSir Harold George Nicolson KCVO CMG was an English diplomat, author, diarist and politician. He was the husband of writer Vita Sackville-West, their unusual relationship being described in their son's book, Portrait of a Marriage.-Early life:Nicolson was born in Tehran, Persia, the younger son of...
(about whom he wrote a two-volume biography), Deborah Mitford, and
Cyril ConnollyCyril Vernon Connolly was an English intellectual, literary critic and writer. He was the editor of the influential literary magazine Horizon and wrote Enemies of Promise , which combined literary criticism with an autobiographical exploration of why he failed to become the successful author of...
.
From 1947 Lees-Milne published a series of architectural works aimed primarily at the general reader. He was also a diarist, and his diaries were published in many volumes and were well received, in later years attracting a cult following. His other works included several biographies and an autobiographical novel.
Lees-Milne died in hospital at
TetburyTetbury is a town and civil parish within the Cotswold district of Gloucestershire, England. It lies on the site of an ancient hill fort, on which an Anglo-Saxon monastery was founded, probably by Ine of Wessex, in 681. The population of the parish was 5,250 in the 2001 census.In the Middle Ages,...
on 28 December 1997. His ashes, together with those of Alvilde, were scattered in the grounds of Essex House.
An authorized biography by Michael Bloch, his friend and literary executor, was published by John Murray in September 2009 (ISBN 978-0-7195-6034-7).
Selected bibliography
- The Age of Adam (1947)
- The Tudor Renaissance (1951)
- The Age of Inigo Jones
Inigo Jones is the first significant British architect of the modern period, and the first to bring Italianate Renaissance architecture to England...
(1953)
- Roman Mornings (1956)
- Earls of Creation (1962)
- St Peter's (1967)
- Another Self (1970), autobiographical novel
- Ancestral Voices (1975), the first of many volumes of diaries covering the years 1942 to 1997, the two final volumes of which are Ceaseless Turmoil (2004) and The Milk of Paradise, (2005). With one slight rewording, the titles of all the diary volumes are taken from Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla...
's poem Kubla KhanKubla Khan is a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, completed in 1797 and published in Christabel, Kubla Khan, and the Pains of Sleep in 1816...
.
- The Last Stuarts (1984), about the Stuart pretenders in the 18th century, including Charles Edward Stuart
Prince Charles Edward Louis John Casimir Sylvester Severino Maria Stuart commonly known as Bonnie Prince Charlie or The Young Pretender was the second Jacobite pretender to the thrones of Great Britain , and Ireland...
, Princess Louise of Stolberg-GedernPrincess Louise Maximilienne Caroline Emmanuele of Stolberg-Gedern was the wife of the Jacobite claimant to the English and Scottish thrones Charles Edward Stuart...
, the Countess of Albany, and Henry Benedict StuartHenry Benedict Stuart was a Roman Catholic Cardinal, as well as the fourth and final Jacobite heir to publicly claim the thrones of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Unlike his father, James Francis Edward Stuart, and brother, Charles Edward Stuart, Henry made no effort to seize the throne...
, Cardinal Duke of York.
- The Enigmatic Edwardian (1988), the life of Reginald, 2nd Viscount Esher.
- The Bachelor Duke: William Cavendish, 6th Duke of Devonshire
William George Spencer Cavendish, 6th Duke of Devonshire KG, PC , styled Marquess of Hartington until 1811, was a British peer, courtier and Whig politician...
(1991)
- Ruthenshaw, 1994, a ghost story.
- Fourteen Friends (1996)
External links