English aristocrat, writer and historian (George) James Lees-Milne was BOTD in 1908. Born in Wickhamford, Worchestershire to a prominent industrialist family with aristocratic ancestry, he was raised at his family’s country estate Wickhamford Manor and educated at Eton College, where he had a passionate affair with fellow student Tom Mitford. He attended Oxford University, where despite support by John Betjeman and Osbert Lancaster, he barely passing his exams, earning a third-class history degree. After graduating, he moved to London and worked as private secretary to politician (and discreetly bisexual) George Lloyd, 1st Baron Lloyd. He was also mentored by diplomat, writer and fellow married bisexual Harold Nicholson, with whom he lived (and presumably slept with) for several years. Nicholson also arranged for his appointment as secretary to the newly-formed Country Houses Committee of the National Trust, established to preserve country houses. The role brought him into contact with the louche group of aristocrats known as the Bright Young Things, socialising with Tom’s sister Nancy Mitford, Hamish St-Clair Erskine, Harold Acton, Cecil Beaton, Robert Byron, Tom Driberg, Gavin Henderson, Brian Howard, Stephen Tennant and Evelyn Waugh. Messily bisexual, he had a number of affairs with men and women, before settling into a relatively stable relationship with conservator Rick Stewart-Jones. At the outbreak of World War Two, he trained as an ambulance driver. Faced with conscription into the British Army, he obtained a commission with the Irish Guards. His calamitous six-month tenure as a soldier came to an end when he was injured during a bomb blast in 1940. Invalided for almost a year, he was eventually diagnosed with epilepsy and was honourably discharged from military service. He returned to his National Trust role, publishing the well-regarded architectural studies The Age of Adam and Tudor Renaissance. In 1949, he married the wealthy (and openly lesbian) heiress Alvilde Chaplin. They had a loving if tempestuous marriage, punctuated by his affairs with James Pope-Hennessy and Stuart Preston and Chaplin’s with Vita Sackville-West. After years of ill health, he retired from the National Trust, living six months of the year with Chaplin in Menton, France, and publishing the acclaimed architectural studies The Age of Inigo Jones and Roman Mornings. In the 1960s, he and Chaplin returned to England, settling at Alderley Grange in the Cotswolds. He achieved a degree of financial independence with the publication of Earls of Creation and St Peters. In 1970, he achieved his greatest literary success with his memoir Another Self, a vivid and candid account of his early life and wartime experiences. Its success led to the 1975 publication of Ancestral Voices, the first volume of his wartime diaries, causing a scandal with his detailed and salacious accounts of his slutty pre-war social circle. He and Chaplin retired to Essex House in Badminton, where he wrote well-reviewed biographies of Nicholson, Reginald Brett, 2nd Viscount Esher and William Cavendish, the 6th Duke of Devonshire. His National Trust memoirs People & Places, was published in 1992 when he was 83. He and Chaplin remained together until her death in 1994. He died in 1997, aged 90.