The Life

I expected twelve volumes of James Lees-Milne’s diaries to last me through the winter but like a case of wine they were consumed more quickly than anticipated. I finished them with considerable sadness one morning last week.

My sadness was over his death and my loss of such an engaging literary companion. However, the same day I received at Brooks’s Michael Bloch’s 2009 biography, James Lees-Milne, The Life; an inscribed present from the author. Apt that I should have received it at Brooks’s where J L-M was a member from 1937 until his death in 1997.  Why hadn’t I read this when it was published? I read many fewer books when I was working; I thought (incorrectly) that it would have little to add to the diaries; it cost £25.

I have read it over the weekend and benefitted by having the diaries relatively fresh in my mind. It is an essential coda to them. Light is shone on nooks and crannies deliberately unilluminated by J L-M, starting with his ancestry. His friends, their place in his life and his marriage all come under scrutiny. There are some quotations from the diaries of necessity but there is much unpublished material from letters and the diaries themselves.

It is worth mentioning that J L-M as a young man in the 1930s was taken under the wing of the much older Harold Nicolson, remaining friends with him and Vita for the rest of his life. Subsequently he wrote a biography of Harold. In turn Michael Bloch as a young man was befriended by J L-M and they remained life long friends. He is his literary executor and biographer. Michael has been more candid about his subject than would have been seemly in Jame’s lifetime and draws a nuanced portrait of him. If you enjoy the diaries you must read the biography.

Politics seldom features but it is worth quoting this entry for 3rd April 1995, published in the biography but not the diaries.

I foresee the European Community becoming like the Soviet Republics, governed by a distant, unknown, unseen force of rulers. It will produce lack of competition, lack of will to work, corruption, inefficiency, disunity and anarchy. Then we shall have a reaction in the form of tribalism, such as we now see in the former Soviet Union and the Balkans and every African nation state.