THIS IS THE DIARY JUNCTION - DATA AND LINKS FOR OVER 500 HISTORICAL AND LITERARY DIARISTS
PLEASE TAKE A MOMENT ALSO TO LOOK AT KIP FENN, A MAJOR NOVEL ABOUT THE 21st CENTURY
- freely available on this site
Lees-Milne, James ___ 1908-1997 ___
British ___ historian, writer
BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY
Lees-Milne grew up at Wickhamford
Manor, a mediaeval property in Worcestershire, and was educated at Lockers
Park, Eton and Magdalen College, Oxford. Encouraged by John Betjeman, he
dreamed of a literary career; this was further encouraged when he went to
live in Harold Nicolson's London flat. Another friend, Lord Lloyd helped
him get a job as an assistant to the head of Reuters. During this time,
Lees-Milne was highly promiscuous and bisexual; having made a cousin pregnant,
he then became engaged to Lady Anne Gathorne-Hardy, who had four homosexual
brothers, but broke off the engagement because of financial worries. Hating
his job at Reuters, he left. Through Nicolson's connections, he was then
employed as secretary to the newly-formed country houses committee of the
National Trust. He worked hard in this role for many years, with a short
break during the war when he was an ambulance driver and served with the
Irish Guards, and was instrumental in the National Trust's acquisition of
many important buildings. However, he also developed his literary ambitions
with novels, some of them autobiographical, and books on architecture. In
1951, he married Alvilde, a lesbian, who had been married before, at a registry
office with Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West as their witnesses.
They lived an unconventional life, only partly together, in France, and
then at Alderley Grange where Alvilde created a garden, in Bath, and finally
at a property on the Badminton estate. Lees-Milne is probably best remembered
for his diaries - full of wit, sharp observation and anecdotes - which were
published in many volumes.
One
biography link
DIARY DATES, CONTENT DESCRIPTORS
1942-1949, 1953-1954, 1971-1997
___ literary social society architecture culture self love/sex people
WEB TEXT LINKS
ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT LINKS
Yale
University Libraries: Beinecke Library
SOME PUBLISHED TITLES
Ancestral Voices
Prophesying Peace
Caves of Ice
May 2005
THIS IS THE DIARY JUNCTION - DATA AND LINKS FOR OVER 500 HISTORICAL AND LITERARY DIARISTS
Please
email if you have any corrections, additions or comments. |
IMPORTANT NOTES AND CAUTIONS:
1) The first line of basic information
may be incomplete in several ways: some historical figures have different
names (titles, pen-names); their birth and death dates may be unknown or
uncertain (g - guess, c - circa); similarly, their occupations may be unknown,
or they may have had other jobs; and, for early diarists, I've used 'British'
a bit too freely. 2) The biographical summary may not be accurate. It was
compiled quickly from various sources, mostly on the internet, and the facts
were not checked anywhere near as rigorously as they would have been if
they'd been intended for publication in a printed form. 3) The journal dates
and descriptors (which are in no particular order) must be treated with
caution: since I have not examined the diaries myself, the descriptors are
only guesses based on bibliographies, anthologies and internet biographies.
4) For the biography and etext links, I have ignored any sites with charges,
and I have avoided, wherever possible, those with pop-ups or too much advertising.
I have limited myself to providing three etext links where there is some
variety between them. 5) For the original manuscript links, I have limited
myself to providing a maximum of two (although, for a few diarists, their
original diaries are held in more than two places). 6) I have provided the
titles - chosen randomly - for up to three printed editions of the diaries. |