A review by claire_fuller_writer
Some Country Houses and Their Owners by James Lee Milne, James Lee Milne

4.0

James Lees-Milne worked for the National Trust and during the 1930s and 1040s he visited many country houses whose owners were thinking about handing them on to the trust. The small book is extracts from his diaries organised by house rather than date. Lees-Milne is wonderfully observant, sometimes snide and very funny: "There were Mr Woodhouse, a little, dull old man with a flabby hand, [and] genial Lord Barrington with hairs growing out of his cheeks and ears..." "Luncheon consisted of one egg in a jacketed potato..."
I will definitely be buying and reading the full diaries.