Eccentric Early Years
James Lees-Milne, Another Self
A deeply religious child, Lees-Milne spent much of his childhood wandering dreamily in the grounds of his parents’ medieval manor house, Wickhamford Manor in Worcestershire. It gave him a nostalgia for the past and a love of historic buildings which would lead to his later distinguished career with the National Trust. Droll, shy and sexually ambivalent, Lees-Milne wrote that he ‘always felt an outsider in every circle’. It was this, combined with his eye for detail and highly developed sense of the ridiculous, that made him such a wonderful comic writer. John Betjeman compared the impact of Another Self to that of Evelyn Waugh’s Decline and Fall.
Diana Holman-Hunt, My Grandmothers and I
Diana Holman-Hunt spent her Edwardian childhood shuttling between two wildly contrasting grandparents. Her paternal grandmother, the eccentric widow of the Pre-Raphaelite painter Holman Hunt, lived entirely in the past in her big gaunt house in Kensington, while her mother’s mother, in her comfortable and well-ordered home on the edge of the Sussex marshes, lived entirely in the present. Both competed for Diana’s affection while being spectacularly blind to her needs. My Grandmothers and I is Diana’s touching and darkly funny memoir of that time – a small comic masterpiece of pitch-perfect dialogue and deadpan observation.
‘Tennis!’ I was astounded . . .
'Lettice Spragg has promised to invite you to tennis one Sunday. I confided my worries to her and read aloud your father’s latest letter.’ ‘Tennis!’ I was astounded . . .
Read moreUnlucky Jim
There are three good reasons for taking take Jim [James] Lees-Milne to one’s heart. First there’s his work for the fledgling National Trust. When he joined it before the War, the Trust employed...
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