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James Lees-Milne (1908-1997)

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lundi 12 juin 2006 [n° 1289]

Do people write diaries any more ?

“James Lees-Milne was surely one of the greatest diarists of the century”. 1

“If you want to experience the merry-go-round of upper-middle-class life in the 20th century you can do no better than follow Lees-Milne, as sharp-tongued, melancholy, jaundiced and reactionary a commentator as ever lived. He does nothing to ingratiate himself with us, has no desire to be liked any more than he would like us. He hates modern life and times, laments the decline of almost everything, is a ferocious snob. But like all the best diarists and almost in spite of himself, he has the keenest of interests in life, a refusal to be only an old fuddy-duddy; he will try almost anything, from a new film or fashionable play to a young lover – he is easily besotted with hopeless people.”

Private Lives by Susan Hill – Do people write diaries any more ? The Guardian, January 10, 2004

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Question of class

“Question of Class” traces the intellectual, social and political journey of the Brideshead Revisited generation of the 1920′s and the more politically engaged generation of the 1930′s, from Eton, Oxford and Cambridge to Mayfair, Chelsea, Bloomsbury and abroad, and explores the influence their common origins and education had on their lives and work.

A QUESTION OF CLASS English Literary Life Between 1918 and 1945

Visit the official James Lees-Milne website to learn about James Lees-Milne and to watch clips from this film.

videos

The Milk of Paradise: Diaries 1993-1997 by James Lees-Milne

Out of the Mists by Larry McMurtry – The New York Review of Books Volume 49, Number 18 · November 21, 2002 THE DIARIES OF JAMES LEES-MILNE

Lees-Milne records his dismay at John Major’s call for a classless society:


I am thinking of writing to Mr Major to tell him you can’t both go “back to basics” and have “a classless society”. For basic politeness and civilised behaviour are the attributes of a gentleman, nurtured in country houses and on the playing fields of Eton. Outside such sanctuaries of good breeding, brutishness and vulgarity flourish. Which is why few things are more distressing than to see aristocrats behaving like louts and swine.

A diarist on a diarist – Harry Phibbs reviews James Lees-Milne’s final volume of diaries by Harry Phibbs, The Social Affairs Unit

Lees-Milne: “I have come to the conclusion that the aristocracy have always been shits, and that in my youth I was too beguiled by them.” But it is only lessened here by his conviction, possibly over-egged, that “the decent and educated ones attain a standard of well-being and good-doing which has never been transcended by any other class in the world.”

The Milk of Paradise: Diaries 1993-1997, by James Lees-Milne Aristos through a sawn-off telescope By Simon Blow Published: 06 November 2005

JAMES LEES-MILNE PAPERS GEN MSS 476 by Ellen Doon New Haven, Connecticut October 2000 Yale

Diarists

The Diary junction The aim of this website is to provide an internet resource for those interested in historical and literary diaries and diarists.

List of diarists Wikipedia

“If a man has no constant lover who shares his soul as well as his body he must have a diary – a poor substitute, but better than nothing” 2

James Lees- Milne


  1. “As a key member of the fledgling National Trust, he spent years inspecting historic buildings offered by eccentric or impecunious owners to the NT and he recorded his observations in several volumes which bristle with wit, malice, gossip and (often scandalous) anecdote. Lees-Milne loved fine objects and weird people in equal measure and he wrote about both with unfailing grace and acuity”. James Lees-Milne John Sandoe Books ltd [back]
  2. Alan Taylor introduces the Anthology of Diarists [back]
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