James Lees-Milne

James Lees-Milne (1908-1997) was an English writer and expert on country houses. He was an influential architectural historian, novelist, and a noted biographer. His continuing influence rests on the fact that he was also, arguably, one of the twentieth century's greatest diarists.

Biography

Lees-Milne came from a family who had prospered through manufacturing, and grew up in Wickhamford, Worcestershire. He attended Lockers Park Prep School, Eton and Oxford University. From 1931 to 1935,he was Private Secretary to George Lloyd, 1st Baron Lloyd of Dolobran. ^[1]

In 1936 he was appointed secretary of the Country House Committee of the National Trust, and he held that position until 1950 apart from a period of military service from 1939-1941. 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 Lady Diana Mosley 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 reorded later how he and Diana (Mosley 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 he was killed in action in Burma in 1945.

He resided on the Badminton estate in Gloucestershire for most of his later years after 1974 while working most days in William Thomas Beckford's library at Lansdown Crescent at Bath. He was a friend of many of the most prominent British intellectual and social figures of his day, including Nancy Mitford, Harold Nicolson (about whom he wrote a two-volume biography), Deborah Mitford, and Cyril Connolly. He married Alvilde Chaplin, 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 lesbian affairs with Vita Sackville-West and the wealthy Winnaretta Singer, among others. ^[2]

From 1947 Lees-Milne published a series of architectural works aimed primarily at the general reader. He was also a diarist, and his diaries^[2] 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.

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 (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's poem Kubla Khan.
• The Last Stuarts (1984), about the Stuart pretenders in the 18th century, including Charles Edward Stuart, Princess Louise of Stolberg-Gedern, the Countess of Albany, and Henry Benedict Stuart, Cardinal Duke of York.
• The Enigmatic Edwardian (1988), the life of Reginald, 2nd Viscount Esher.
• The Bachelor Duke: William Cavendish, 6th Duke of Devonshire (1991)
• Ruthenshaw, 1994, a ghost story.
• Fourteen Friends (1996)

References

External links

• Official website