‘The single choice between Oxford or Cambridge was as imperative as that between a man’s shoe- and gunmaker. The shoes came either from Lobb or Peel, the guns from Purdey or Holland and Holland. There was no other way of looking at these matters.’ – James Lees-Milne, Another Self
James Lees-Milne, writer and architectural historian, is probably best remembered for his mischievously perceptive diaries, which chronicled the doings of upper-class English society from the Second World War onwards in twelve addictive volumes. Another Self, his fanciful, funny, yet poignant account of his early years, has the same gripping quality.
A deeply religious child, Jim 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. His father, however, had no time whatsoever for such arty attitudes. He determined that, after leaving Eton in 1926, Jim should ‘stand on his own feet’ and accordingly enrolled him in Miss Blakeney’s Stenography School for Young Ladies in Chelsea where, as the only male student, he spent a lonely year learning shorthand and typing.
Thanks to his mother he escaped to Oxford (a disappointment) and thence to London, where he had another searing experience as assistant to Sir Roderick Jones, the boorish and dyspeptic chairman of Reuters. Droll, shy and sexually ambivalent, James 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.
We are pleased to share Lees-Milne’s account of his university years as written about in Another Self. Although Oxford proved a disappointment, quite unlike the ‘flower-like time of one’s life’ as Wilde famously put it, it ultimately led him to a resolution that would shape his future career at the National Trust: ‘I vowed that I would devote my energies and abilities, such as they were, to preserving the country houses of England.’
Please scroll on to read the extract, along with a selection of recommendations for other tempting additions to your bookshelves.
With best wishes, as ever, from the SF staff
Isabel, Rebecca, Ruth, Edie & Jennie
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