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James Lees-Milne (1908-1997) was an English writer and expert on country houses. He was a noted biographer and historian, and is also considered one of the twentieth century's great diarists. He came from a family of landed gentry and grew up in Worcestershire. He attended Eton and Oxford University. In 1936 he was appointed secretary of the Country House Committee of the National Trust, and he held that position until 1950 apart from a period of military service from 1939-1941. He was instrumental in the first large scale transfer of country houses from private ownership to the Trust. After resigning his full-time position in 1950 he continued his connection with the National Trust as a part time architectural consultant. He spent most of his later years in Gloucestershire. He was a friend of many of the most prominent British intellectual and social figures of his day, including Nancy Mitford, Harold Nicolson (about whom he wrote a two-volume biography), and Cyril Connolly. He married Alvilde Chaplin, formerly Bridges, a prominent gardening and landscape expert, in 1951. Alvilde Lees-Milne died in 1994.

From 1947 Lees-Milne published a series of architectural works aimed primarily at the general reader. He was also a diarist, and his diaries were published in many volumes and were well received, in later years attracting a cult following. His other works included several biographies and an autobiographical novel.

An authorized biography by Michael Bloch is forthcoming in 2007.

• Official website

This list is incomplete.

• The Age of Adam (1947)
• The Tudor Renaissance (1951)
• The Age of Inigo Jones (1953)
• Roman Mornings (1956)
• Earls of Creation (1962)
• St Peter's (1967)
• Another Self (1970) - autobiographical novel
• Ancestral Voices (1975), the first of many volumes of diaries covering the years 1942 to 1997, the most recent of which is Ceaseless Turmoil (2004). The final volume, The Milk of Paradise, appeared in 2005. With one slight rewording, the titles of all the diary volumes

are taken from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem Kubla Khan.

• The Last Stuarts (1984). about the Stuart pretenders in the 18th century, including Charles Edward Stuart, Princess Louise of Stolberg-Gedern, the Countess of Albany, and Henry Benedict Stuart, Cardinal Duke of York.
• The Enigmatic Edwardian (1988), the lfie of Reginald, 2nd Viscount Esher.
• The Bachelor Duke: William Cavendish, 6th Duke of Devonshire (1991)
• Ruthenshaw, 1994, a ghost story.
• Fourteen Friends (1996)