James Lees-Milne: The Life - Couverture rigide

'Admirably crisp, brisk and comprehensive'

(The Sunday Times (Culture), Peter Kemp)

'Full of sex, scandal and name-dropping, this biography does justice to James Lees-Milne'

(The Observer, Oliver Marre)

'Very funny indeed'

(The Independent on Sunday, DJ Taylor)

'If he does not sweep us up the whole length of the drive with his passionate intensity, he succeeds in dropping us off safely at the gates of a minor, but convincing, national treasure'

(The Telegraph Review, Nicholas Shakespeare)

'Funny, observant and revealing'

(The Scotsman, David Sexton)

'Fascinating new biography'

(Daily Mail)

'...a remarkable study, a striking three-dimensional portrait of a subversive, sensitive and endearing man...'

(Selina Hastings, Sunday Telegraph)

'Bloch has produced the perfect compliment to Lees-Milne's books and fully justified his mentor's faith'

(Evening Standard, David Sexton)

'Michael Bloch has resisted writing a pompous, laborious tombstone of a book about this long, busy, well-documented life.  His biography is disciplined, compact, elegant and tender...'

(Richard Davenport-Hines, Times Literary Supplement)

'Total candour and integrity.  This is an absolutely model biography'

(A. N. Wilson, Country Life)

James Lees-Milne (1908-97) - 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 twentieth-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.