Overview
James Lees-Milne (1908–1997)—known to friends as Jim—is remembered for his work for the National Trust, rescuing some of England’s greatest architectural treasures, and for the vivid and entertaining diaries which have earned him a reputation as "the 20th-century Pepys." In this long-awaited biography, Michael Bloch portrays a life rich in contradictions, in which an unassuming youth overtook more dazzling contemporaries to emerge as a leading figure in the fields of conservation and letters. It describes Jim’s bisexual love life, his tempestuous marriage to the exotic Alvilde, and his friendship with other fascinating literary figures including John Betjeman, Robert Byron, Rosamond Lehmann, and the Mitford sisters (whose brother Tom had been Jim’s great love at Eton). It depicts a man who was romantically attached to the England of his childhood and felt out of tune with his own times, but who left an enduring legacy through the preservation of country houses and his eloquent chronicling of a dying world.
Synopsis
James Lees-Milne (1908–1997)—known to friends as Jim—is remembered for his work for the National Trust, rescuing some of England’s greatest architectural treasures, and for the vivid and entertaining diaries which have earned him a reputation as "the 20th-century Pepys." In this long-awaited biography, Michael Bloch portrays a life rich in contradictions, in which an unassuming youth overtook more dazzling contemporaries to emerge as a leading figure in the fields of conservation and letters. It describes Jim’s bisexual love life, his tempestuous marriage to the exotic Alvilde, and his friendship with other fascinating literary figures including John Betjeman, Robert Byron, Rosamond Lehmann, and the Mitford sisters (whose brother Tom had been Jim’s great love at Eton). It depicts a man who was romantically attached to the England of his childhood and felt out of tune with his own times, but who left an enduring legacy through the preservation of country houses and his eloquent chronicling of a dying world.
The Barnes & Noble Review
If James Lees-Milne is a name that means little or nothing to you, then you should first pick up Michael Bloch's recent biography, James Lees-Milne: The Life, for a lively introduction to his world: a privileged, upper-middle-class family, Eton and Oxford during the 1920s (where Lees-Milne was academically undistinguished), myriad love affairs with both men and women, work for the National Trust, eventual marriage to the wealthy and rather steely Alvilde (also bisexual: she entered into liaisons with the elderly Princess de Polignac and Vita Sackville-West), much travel in France and Italy, and acquaintances that reached back to the elderly American aesthetes Logan Pearsall Smith and Bernard Berenson and up to the heart-throb travel writer Bruce Chatwin and rock star Mick Jagger (who commissioned Alvilde to design a garden for his house in France). At the end of Lees-Milne's life, even the Prince of Wales -- an admirer of his preservation work -- came to visit him several times at the hospital.