Dame Helen Ghosh on James Lees-Milne

Great Lives

BBC

Documentary, History, Society & Culture

4.2 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 28 April 2015

⏱️ 28 minutes

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Summary

Matthew Parris's guest is Dame Helen Ghosh, Director General of the National Trust, who chooses as her Great Life James Lees-Milne who worked for the Trust between 1936 and 1966. He was responsible for acquiring many of the Trust's most iconic properties and his particular talent was his ability to persuade the aristocratic owners of the houses into handing them over to the Trust for protection. His other talent was in writing, and it is his deliciously indiscreet diaries for which many people know him.

Merlin Waterson, who was a friend of Lees-Milne's, is the expert witness.

Producer Christine Hall.

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2015.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Once you've wrapped up this podcast, how about trying a very British cult?
0:06.0	What happens if the person you trust with your future isn't what you think they are?
0:10.0	I did feel the whole time he was watching me Yeti. I saw a footprint and that really gave me gusmas.
0:16.4	Or people who knew me. Emme, I remember every secret, every lie. I'm the only one who knows the truth.
0:23.0	Discover more of our biggest podcast from 2003.
0:27.0	Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:29.0	Great Lives is a download from Radio 4.
0:32.0	We hope you enjoy what you're about to hear.
0:35.0	Our great life today, whom I don't think I ever met, once wrote of me.
0:41.0	I don't like these flaunting homosexuals with their pleased with
0:44.8	themselves attitude as though they were deprived and stood for a noble cause.
0:48.7	It isn't a noble cause, it is a mistake. Well, he's dead, and they say revenge is best of cold, so nearly 20 years
0:57.7	later allow me to remark that James Lee's Milne was a silly old queen, and all that self-hatred is frankly just a bore. But I forgive because
1:06.7	people like Lees Milne have made a greater contribution to our cultural life than I ever will.
1:12.1	It seems hard to imagine now at a time to our cultural life than I ever will.
1:13.0	It seems hard to imagine now at a time when social history and national heritage is so much
1:17.9	part of popular entertainment, that during and after the Second World War, the English country house seemed threatened with extinction.
1:27.0	Military requisitioning, high taxes, the loss of servants,
1:31.0	meant that at one time these houses were being pulled down literally by the week.
1:35.0	Today's great lives is about the man responsible for preserving many of the best examples for the National Trust.
1:42.0	And I'm very pleased to welcome Dame Helen Gosh,
1:46.0	Director General of the National Trust to tell us about him.
	...

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