James Lees-Milne was born on 6th August 1908 at Wickhamford Manor, Worcestershire as George James Henry Lees-Milne. He was an English writer and expert in Country Houses who worked for the National Trust from 1936 to 1973. His extensive diaries remain in print to this day (1942 – 1954, 1984 - 1997) and they give some insight into the writer’s life and sexuality.
Scholar of Literature, Nicholas Birns notes that Lees-Milne spoke "so candidly about himself, his life, and his love of art and architecture that his authorial relationship with the reader becomes a privileged one, not to be readily or casually communicated, not to be flaunted or brandished."
From 1931 to 1935, Lees-Milne was private secretary to the 1st Baron Lloyd. Then, in 1936 he became secretary of the Country Houses Committee of the National Trust, and remained in this position until 1950 (apart from military service in 1939–1941). In 1950, he resigned the full-time position but stayed on as a part-time architectural consultant and committee member.
Ironically, in 2016, when the Daily Mail attempted to urge National Trust Members to resign over LGBTQ+ history celebration, the columnist behind the campaign quoted the 1930s, bisexual National Trust secretary James Lees-Milne, who wrote of gays in an acerbic, witty tone: “Their mannerisms, their social contacts, their sharp little jokes are the same the world over. How is it they do not recognise that they are artificial, shallow, slick, sophisticated and absurd?”
In 1951, Lees-Milne married Alvilde, Viscountess Chaplin, née Bridges, a prominent gardening and landscape expert. Both she and James were bisexual, and conducted many affairs. Alvilde is said to have had affairs with Vita Sackville-West and Winnaretta Singer, among others.
James Lees-Milne is said to have had several notable male lovers including Tom Mitford (brother of the notorious Mitford sisters) when they were at Eton College together, and Harold Nicolson – a British politician, diplomat, historian, journalist, and husband of Vita Sackville-West – of whom he wrote a two-volume biography.
John Gielgud (English actor and theatre director) is also said to have had a short but passionate affair with James Lees-Milne largely conducted in the relative safety of a lavish hotel in Thame; the Spread Eagle Hotel (Not to be confused with Chicago's "number 17, the spread eagle".) "For six weeks I was infatuated with him", Lees-Milne later recalled in his diary, "[t]hen it passed like a cloud"’
Alvilde Lees-Milne died in 1994, and James Lees-Milne died three years later in a hospital in Tetbury on 28th December 1997. A series of three plays inspired by Lees-Milne's diaries – ‘Sometimes into the Arms of God’, ‘The Unending Battle’, and ‘What England Owes’ – was broadcast by the BBC in 2013 (unfortunately the episodes are not currently available).
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