James lees milne biography channel

  • Michael Bloch's affectionate and respectful biography of Lees-Milne, a man employed for many years by the National Trust, but whose lasting reputation is.
  • JAMES LEES-MILNE (), English architectural conservationist and writer, is now best remembered for his diaries.
  • James Lees-Milne.

    • •

    Originally published in

    As some of you may already know, I am a great reader of British diaries, letters and journals. There are many such volumes on the shelves of my personal library. From Pepys to Queen Victoria, I adore the immediacy of these personal writings, the way they drop you right into the lives of their authors and introduce you in a very intimate manner to people, places and times otherwise vanished. Recently, I came across the diaries of James Lees-Milne, which had somehow managed to escape my notice over the past few decades. JML was in at the very beginnings of the National Trust and the Georgian Society, amongst other things, and was advisor to the National Trust on which properties should be purchased and preserved by that body. In this capacity, JML travelled around the UK, poking his nose into a variety of stately homes and writing down for posterity his views on their architectural merits, their contents and their owners, often with wit and sometimes with

  • james lees milne biography channel

    • •










    is now closed to new comments
    Alison MoffattDecember 11,
    I am trying to get hold of a copy of "Fouteen Friends" for my mother-in-law Jane Moore, who was at one time one of Murrays editors, there is a copy available second hand through Amazon but at �66 it seems furiosly expensive. I would so appreciate any thoughts on this or advice!

    John BarrattNovember 5,
    So, the final volume, and a tribute to James that even its last entry raised a smile amidst the sadness.I think of him now in a specially adapted corner of heaven (perhaps a rather more elaborate version of Chatsworth?), surrounded with Alvilde and all those departed friends of past years, partaking of a delicious luncheon, and quaffing the "Milk of Paradise". And now to start those "diaries" all over again

    angela pullan-wellsOctober 31,
    I discovered J L-M in the year of his death looking for something completely different I recognized his n

    •

    Obituary: James Lees-Milne

    James Lees-Milne, architectural historian and writer: born Wickhamford, Worcestershire 6 August ; Private Secretary to the first Lord Lloyd ; personal, Reuters ; Secretary, Country Houses Committee, National Trust , sekreterare, Historic Buildings Committee , Adviser on Historic Buildings ; FRSL ; FSA ; married Alvilde, Viscountess Chaplin (nee Bridges, died ; one stepdaughter); died Tetbury, Gloucestershire 28 månad

    Shy, droll, diligent, well- connected, James Lees-Milne was an enigmatic and provokativ figure, one of the last of the great amateurs and always the first to decry his achievements. A heroic saviour of historic houses (he would säga he preferred houses to people), he was a mischievously accurate diarist and author of one of the best autobiographies since the Second World War.

    As executive of the National Trust's Country Houses Scheme from its inception in , he was more or less single-handedly responsible for beguiling suspicious, desperate a