Michael Bloch

An intimate and inspiring biography of James Lees-Milne, author, biographer, diarist and conservationist, by one of his handsome young protégés. I was most interested in reading about Lees-Milne's formative endeavours with the National Trust, touring the country to select country houses for future preservation, but came to fall a little in love with the man himself.

Lees-Milne was of the Mitford generation - he fell in love with Diana and became good friends with Debo - of the 1920s and show more 30s, born of a privileged and educated background. He enjoyed the personal associations with many of the families he later visited on behalf of the National Trust, worked as a private secretary to George Lloyd and Harold Nicolson, and wrote biographies, novels and works on historical figures and architectural sites. He married Alvilde Chaplin, who later had a lesbian affair with Vita Sackville-West, the wife of Harold Nicolson. (Lees-Milne was also bisexual, and had an affair with Nicolson, among others.) If I read half of this in a work of fiction, I would be hard pressed to suspend my disbelief, but 'Jim' Lees-Milne lived about four lives, all of them entertaining, productive and well-connected, in his near-ninety years on this earth.

A wonderful and endearing account, based on his diaries and letters, but edited honestly by a close friend and student. show less

A good book about a remarkable man. I have read all his diaries.
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 show more 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. show less

This is an excellent and very readable biography of the Hitler-era German Foreign Minister, written by a biographer who knows a good deal of the period through his work on the Windsors and their connections to the Nazi regime. The book does not pretend to be a full birth to grave scholarly biography but is fully researched from primary sources and gives a very full account of Ribbentrop's ascent to his post through various diplomatic postings (and disasters), suitably laced with humour. It show more helps in reading the book to already have a fairly good grasp of the main characters of Hitler's court and the progess of the Second World War and the period leading up to it. The story of Ribbentrop's appearance at Nuremburg and his execution makes a sombre coda to this rather woeful tale of a life of a very ordinary man thrust into an extraordinary position. Bloch writes with sympathy and humanity but with no disguising the horrors at the heart of the regime. show less

Exemplary biography of a man who played a pivotal role in saving dozens of Britain's aristocratic "Country Houses" for posterity, and who also became a noted diarist and biographer. Lees-Milne led an interesting, complex life and was astute at describing interesting, complex lives in his journals and biographies.

This biography is essential for those interested in 20th century British social, cultural, and literary history. Incidentally or not, Lees-Milne and his wife, Alvilde Bridges show more Chaplin, were both bisexual in orientation, and each had intense relationships with individuals of their own gender. In the 1930s, JLM was involved with fellow biographer, memoirist, and diplomat Harold Nicolson; later, in the 1950s his wife Alvilde had a passionate affair with Nicolson's wife the gardening maven Vita Sackville-West (Virginia Woolf's great love, inspiration for "Orlando.") Adding to the book's interest: the author of this biography, Michael Bloch, 44 years younger than Lees-Milne, was JLM's last great passion, a passion no less intense for being entirely platonic. show less