The Rest Is History - 493. Lee Miller: Exposing the Horrors of World War Two

Episode Date: September 11, 2024

It’s August 1944: the Liberation of Paris is underway, and France appears to slowly be extricating herself from Nazi control. But, on the French western shores, in Saint-Malo, the deafening sounds of artillery fire continue to punctuate daily life, with the Germans making a last-ditch attempt to hold the coastal town. And when the U.S. Army arrive to lay siege to the German positions, the last person expected to be among the Allied forces is a photographer, let alone a female one… Until the publication of The Lives of Lee Miller in 1985 by her son, Antony Penrose, very little was known of the woman who forced her way into occupied Europe, and documented the true horrors of the Nazi campaign. Her photographs capturing Nazi evil went around the world, exposing the atrocities of the Holocaust and the harrowing aftermath of the death of Hitler. Now, her incredible story is being told in a new film, LEE, with Kate Winslet taking on the role of the formidable title character. From a marriage to a man famed for dying himself blue, to a staged photoshoot in Hitler’s bathtub, Join Tom and Dominic as they explore the extraordinary story of Lee Miller. Joining Winslet is Andy Samberg playing Life Magazine photographer David E. Scherman; Alexander Skarsgård playing English Surrealist painter, photographer, poet and biographer Roland Penrose; Marion Cotillard playing Solange D’Ayen, the fashion director of French Vogue and close friend of Miller’s: Josh O’Connor playing Tony, a young journalist and Andrea Riseborough playing British Vogue Editor Audrey Withers. Only in cinemas from Friday 13th September, book tickets now - https://www.leefilm.co.uk As always we appreciate your feedback on The Rest Is History to help make the podcast better: https://forms.gle/GymJghf56DFzZ8rAA _______ LIVE SHOWS *The Rest Is History BOOK TOUR* To celebrate the launch of our second book, “The Rest Is History Returns”, Dominic and Tom will be appearing onstage in both Oxford and Cambridge in September! *The Rest Is History LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall* Tom and Dominic, accompanied by a live orchestra, take a deep dive into the lives and times of two of history’s greatest composers: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven. *The Rest Is History LIVE in the U.S.A.* If you live in the States, we've got some great news: Tom and Dominic will be performing throughout America in November, with shows in San Francisco, L.A., Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Boston and New York.  Tickets on sale now at TheRestIsHistory.com _______ Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Assistant Producer: Tabby Syrett Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. This episode is sponsored by our good friends at Sky, all because their new Sky original film, Lee, is available from the 13th of September only in cinemas. Now, Lee charts the life of one of the most remarkable photographers of the Second World War, Lee Miller. And that's the person we're going to be talking about in today's episode. It was her photographs of Dachau and her photographs from across the ruins of the Third Reich, Tom, that

brought home the horrors of the conflict to the British and American public. So Kate Winslet plays Lee, but it is kind of an amazingly A-list cast all round. So there's Andy Samberg, Alexander Skarsgård, Marielle Cotillard, Josh O'Connor, Andrea Rysborough, all starring it alongside her. Well, Tom, as you know, I've always been really fascinated by Lee Miller as a character, because I often think that without photographs like the ones that she took, would the world have been able to come to terms with what was happening and understand what was happening in the concentration camps in quite the same way? Yeah, it explores that, explores other aspects of the Second World War,

the relationship of photography to conflict and to horror. And I mean, it's a real kind of prestige drama, a very serious story on one level, but also thrilling. I really loved it. Lee is out in cinemas from Friday the 13th of September and you can go to sky.com to find out more. These are pictures of a nation at war. They are honest pictures,

routine scenes to those of us who have reported Britain's ordeal by fire and high explosive. These Englishmen have bought survival with their tender-roofed old buildings, with their bodies and their nerves. This little book offers you a glimpse of their battle. Somehow they are able to fight down their fears each night, to go to work each morning. So that was the legendary CBS war correspondent, Ed Murrow, in the introduction to his book, Grim Glory, Pictures of Britain Under Fire. And it was a book that was designed, essentially designed as pro-British propaganda in the Second World War, showing the American public how Britain was

carrying on during the Blitz. But Dominic, the real interest of that book isn't the deathless prose, which I just read, I think, very beautifully. But the pictures, and specifically, perhaps, the identity of the woman who took those pictures which is the great photographer lee miller yes so some listeners may not have heard of lee miller but i'm guessing that almost all of them will have seen her pictures whether they know it or not so the most famous ones probably the most infamous i suppose are the pictures she took of dachau when Dachau was liberated. So that's the sort of late April 1945. But she also took, there's a very famous photograph of a GI on Hitler's bed in his apartment in Munich reading a copy of Mein Kampf that went around the world.

And there's probably an even more famous picture now of Lee Miller herself in Hitler's bath. Tom, you must have seen that picture. I have, yeah. Tremendous image. I've always been really interested in Lee Miller. I have a sort of stash of old magazines from the 1940s at the back of my office.

And a lot of them have Lee Miller photographs. And I've always been interested in her because she's a pioneering female photographer, because she's a great link between the world of the kind of 1920s 1930s artistic avant-garde you know i love the avant-garde tom i know you do you love a bit of surrealism love it all over it i mean actually i'm quite a surrealist kind of person i know you are i think i'd fit into that milieu beautifully lobster telephones all of that yeah exactly

but also her experiences in the war are pretty extraordinary so she's a great character yeah so i'll put my hand up i only had the vaguest sense of her so i knew about the photos she took of the holocaust and of her in the bath and a vague sense that she's kind of hanging out with man ray and picasso and cocteau in paris leading her best American expat life there. But as research for this, I've done two things, Dominic. So I went yesterday to Goldhanger Towers, where Gary Lineker has had a private cinema built for himself. Really? Yeah. Who goes to that? You, Alan Shearer, Alistair Campbell. Yeah, we're all hanging out there. Oh my God. I'm never invited. And obviously Theo was there with the popcorn.

Yeah. Tabby was serving out ice cream. Had a wonderful time. Oh, I'm so jealous. And they were screening a new film about Lee Miller, which stars Kate Winslet. Really? Who puts in fantastic performance. Because actually, you know, she looks quite like Lee Miller.

Okay. So that taught me all kinds of things I didn't know. So I didn't know that she ended up in a farm in Sussex And also I didn't know that she was married to Alexander Skarsgård Which was a pleasant surprise to discover Yeah, you must have been excited by that Who has a very good English accent Yeah

Which I hadn't realised And then I came back from watching that And I went into the Bodleian And I made copious notes Yeah So I now feel that I am ready to go head to head with you So you're full of I'm full of Lee Miller facts.

You're full of interesting anecdotes that aren't true. Well, this is what I want to find out. I want to find out what, you know, what's kind of accurate in the film, what's accurate in Wikipedia. I'm suspecting the film is more accurate than Wikipedia, but whatever. Take it away, Dominic. Okay. So the story of Lee Miller.

So she's born, Tom, I'm very pleased to say, in Poughkeepsie, New York. I mean, that is ridiculous spelling, isn't it? I thought it was Poughkeepsie. I don't know. Why can't they have sensible spelling in America, like Worcester? Yeah, like Gloucester. Yeah, exactly. They let themselves down there.

Anyway, she's born there in 1907. So that's in, I think, the Hudson Valley. Her father, Theodore Miller. Tom, brilliantly, he's descended from one of the Hessians who fought for the legitimate authorities at the end of the 18th century against the tax chiefs. So he's in favour of paying tax. Definitely.

He's the work superintendent at a factory. He's a great tinkerer. And in fact, they're a family of tinkerers. Tinkerers, not tinkers. Yeah, exactly. They're definitely not tinkers. Selling pots and pans from door to door. No, they're a family of tinkerers so as a girl tinkerers not tinkers yeah yeah exactly they're definitely not tinkers selling pots and pans from door to door no they're not so um one thing we know about her there's a biography of her by her um her son anthony penrose that sort of goes into

the details of her life so um she was a great enthusiast for a chemistry set and she's tinkering away with their chemistry set while her father has built a dark room under the stairs and his big love is photography so obviously from a very early age she's surrounded by cameras she loves all this you know they love messing around with little machines and stuff but actually tom there's a there's quite a dark shadow over her childhood i was quite shocked to read this very very, very dark, isn't it? She went to stay with family friends in Brooklyn when she was seven. And the son of these family friends abused her. And she got back to Poughkeepsie. And she was infected with venereal disease.

And the only treatment in those days, pre-penicillin, was they had to sort of douse her with dichloride of mercury. And this apparently was very traumatic. When she was seven years old. This was very traumatic. And her parents then sent her to a psychiatrist. And in the biography by her son, he says that the psychiatrist basically went out of his way to say to her, sex and love are two totally different things. You know, you can completely disassociate them. them and i don't think you have to be too much of a kind of amateur psychologist to think that this

had an impact on the way she thought about personal relationships as we will see because she ends up being somebody who does completely disassociate sex and love but i suppose dominic also this is the era where freud's ideas are starting to be popularized psychoanalysis is becoming very mainstream and so i suppose she will grow up in that milieu when she in particularly in paris where she ends up yeah definitely all of these ideas are very very current yes absolutely she's a very wayward child in some ways she's always she's not clearly bright but she's always been kicked out of various private schools in new york in 1925 so when she's a teenager one of her teachers who's actually a polish woman who teaches french she's taking a shine to lee and she

says i'll take you to paris for the summer and she goes to paris she absolutely falls in love with i mean this is kind of paris in its heyday really yeah between the wars painters mom march or all that all that stuff exactly and she actually then decides she's going to stay and she stays for a year she studies theater i like to think of her doing a lot of mime. Yes. At a theatre that had been co-founded by Erno Goldfinger. Oh, brilliant. The inspiration for Goldfinger, the Fort Knox robbing sort of rotund supervillain.

But he was an architect, wasn't he? He was an architect. Who Fleming fell out with. Yes, exactly. Because he was building, he was always building modernist buildings in Hampstead. I think that's the problem. Anyway, this isn't an issue at this stage.

She's in Paris. She's learning the theatre. She loves it so much, actually, that her father actually has to come to bring her back. So it's very kind of Dickie Greenleaf in Talents of Mr. Ripley.

There's a kind of Patricia Highsmith quality slightly to the story. Definitely there is. And then a very Patricia Highsmith-ish kind of moment. She comes back to New York. So what is she now? She's about to the story. Definitely there is. And then a very Patricia Highsmith-ish kind of moment. She comes back to New York.

So what is she now? She's about to turn 20 and she's crossing the road in New York and basically she steps into the traffic and is almost run over. Like Churchill.

Yeah, like Churchill. Exactly the same. I mean, uncanny. So all these kind of luminaries in the Second World War narrowly dodging being run over in New York. Yeah.

Very odd. I know. Yeah. Very odd. I know. It is very odd. Anyway, the bloke who pulled her back, Tom, would you believe it, is Condé Nast, the magazine. Oh, he's a person. Yeah. I had no idea.

Yeah. Condé Nast is a person. He's a sort of magazine and newspaper, more magazine than newspaper, tycoon. So it's Condé Nast that the world has to thank for Vogue and Vanity Fair. Condé Nast is a very kind of dapper man. He rescues her. And according to her son's biography, she, who has just got back from Paris, babbled in French in a glamorous manner at him.

And he said, my dear. Is he French? No, he's American. He went to Georgetown University. So where does Condé come from? It's just showing off, isn't it? Yes. He says, my dear, you know, you're a very charming young woman.

Would you care to model in my new magazine Vogue? And she does. By March 1927, so just a year after she's come back from paris she's on the front cover of vogue because she has a kind of very roaring 20s vibe doesn't she she definitely does so she's very tall she's very blonde she's a very striking very attractive woman you can see absolutely why she'd be such a hit and the most famous ad that she did actually which doesn't sound terribly glamorous she's's supposedly, I mean, I've actually done some digging into this and I can't really work out how true this is,

but it is said she is the first model to be photographed to advertise sanitary towels. This is a firm called Kotex. This ad ran in all the fashionable magazines and was sort of seen as groundbreaking and stuff. And at first she doesn't control her image the photos are taken for an agency and then they're kind of sold so at first she's a bit taken aback by it but actually she loved the kind of notoriety of it so in the bodleian yeah which i was doing intensive research yesterday yeah it said that this ruined her career yeah that's tosh and rubbish is it yeah? Yeah. Okay, well that's a mistake. Because she goes on to do loads of modelling.

Poor from the Bodleian. Yeah, they've let themselves down. Oh my God. Such a venerable library as well. Yeah. They've let me down, they've let Lee Miller down, but worst of all, they've let themselves down. Yeah, and they've let Kotex down, which is sad. Anyway, the thing is, she's not just interested in what's going on sort of in front of the

camera, but she's also interested in what's going behind it. Because her father is massively into his photography now. And at weekends, she'll spend the week in New York modelling. Then she'll go back to the Hudson Valley. They will experiment on photography together. Now, the one thing that I think is slightly odd is... Well, let's be honest. I mean, very odd.

Yeah. His passion is nudes. Yeah. And he loves nudes of lee and she loves it but again this is all very kind of freudian psychology or you know alice in wonderland hint maybe more open-minded listeners than me may say what are they complaining about they're so repressed this is completely reasonable behavior i wouldn't have modeled for my father i was in my 20s some would you i don't want to go down this avenue no no well anyway i don't think you would frankly i don't want to presume but i don't think you would anyway she does that for a while but basically she can't wait to get back to paris so 1929 she goes to paris

she's now very well connected obviously in kind of the modeling world, the fashion world, that kind of nexus. But also, Dominic, just to ask, so all of that, but also all this stuff about her dad taking photographs and things. And she's been having psychotherapy, presumably, you know, since a young age. I mean, this makes her absolutely ideal for all the surrealists who are in Paris. I mean, they're massively into all that, aren't they? Yeah, they are, of course. The sort of introspection, but also the obsession, obviously. Bunuel and Dali and all of that.

Yeah, the obsession, the sort of post-Freudian obsession with sex and all of that stuff. Absolutely. And as it happens, when she goes back to Paris, a friend gives her an introduction to a very well-known person, one of the best-known photographers in the world at this point, one of the best-known of all the surrealists, who is this guy, Man Ray. And Man Ray is actually from Philadelphia. He's American. He's Emmanuel Ratnitsky. I think he's a family of Russian, I think, immigrants.

And he was famous for his kind of Dadaist and then surrealist kind of collages and images and so on. Lee Miller said later that he kind of looked like a bull. He's this kind of very bear-like man, big eyebrows. And she just turns up to see him and says, I want to study with you. And he says, well, I don't have any students. Anyway, I'm going on holiday. I'm leaving Paris. And she said, brilliant. I'll come with you. And she did. And they ended up living together for three years. And they were a great partnership. He teaches about surrealism. He teaches photography and stuff. They have this kind of open relationship. Well, I read in your notes that she was known as Madame Man Ray. Yes.

Whereas surely it would have been easier for her to be known simply as Woman Ray. I knew this joke was coming. This tremendous joke. It's a joke I've been waiting to make all the show. What's so shameful about this joke is that Theo crafted a joke for you overnight and you stamped on it very coldly. Well, I wasn't having my jokes upstage. So that you could use your own frankly weak joke. Oh, I think the listeners will be rolling in the aisles at that one. Okay.

So she's still doing a lot of modelling. She's modelling for the Parisian edition of Vogue. Cecil Beaton, British photographer who actually... Cecil Beaton, my erstwhile neighbour. Yeah, of course. Yeah. We used to kick footballs over his wall and go and roam in his garden. Yeah.

It's nice to think that I have a link to 1920s Paris. So Cecil Beaton said of Lee Miller, he didn't even like Lee Miller, but he said, she looked like a sun-kissed goat boy from the Appian Way. Didn't he say that of you? He may well have done, actually, thinking back. He's a very entertaining figure in the film, just mentioning that. Okay. I felt upset on Cecil Beaton's behalf.

Really? A bit. Right. I've always had a soft spot for him. He was always very nice to us. You know, he didn't mind us running around like whatever it was like goat boys on the Appian Way goat boys on the Appian Way he was very into that

okay so she's massively into her surrealism loves all that she gets her own apartment she gets her own studio by 1930 just down the road from Man Ray's studio and she starts to carve out a little bit of a niche for herself as somebody who's not just modelling but also taking photos.

So not just a muse, in other words. Not just a muse, exactly. History's full of muses of this kind, but she is more ambitious than that. And especially in Paris at that time. Yeah, of course. I mean, that's what Picasso's all about. She's more ambitious because she is taking kind of society portraits. So she's doing loads of kind of bohemian people.

She gets in with the French aristocracies. This is the thing about the nexus between the fashion industry and the sort of early 20th century fashion industry and the world

of high society kind of aristocratic types. She has all these kind of aristocratic friends, doesn't she? Can I tell you about one of them? Do. Who I read about

in the Bodleian yesterday. Yeah. It's an interesting link to the French Revolution. I love a link to the French Revolution. And also a link to the French Revolution. And also she's in the film, she's played by Marianne Cotillard.

And this is Solange Marie Christine Louise de Labrif, the Duchess of Aisne, who is married, Dominic, to the son of the 8th Duke of Nye. Nye. Nye. So remind me, the Duchess of Nye was the person

who greeted Marie Antoinette when she arrived in yeah and Sticla for etiquette and Lafayette married into the family right

and her son is the guy who kicks off the abrogation of feudal privileges yeah that's right in the National Assembly should have done it

two years earlier so she's the fashion editor of French Vogue she lives in a chateau she's the kind of the beating heart of Le Tout Paris and you know it's that's great I She's the kind of the beating heart of Le Tout Paris.

And, you know, it's... That's great. I mean, it's kind of Proustian, I guess. Yeah, it is Proustian. Proust, Picasso, Cocteau, Coco Chanel. She's friends. I mean, it's amazing. It's like that Woody Allen film set in Paris where they kind of rush around meeting Hemingway and everybody. Right.

Basically, every famous person in Paris, she is meeting. And do you know what? Her father comes over in December 1930 and he's a man from- Does he take photographs of her? Poughkeepsie. Oh, my darling. Do you want to take your clothes off, Lee? Do you want to, for old time's sake, and we'll take a quick photo?

He comes over from Poughkeepsie, New York, and he's a work superintendent, remember? And you would think, now if this was a film, you know, if this bit was a film, you would say he'll be very shocked at this point. You know, he'll be very disappointed. No, he loves a film, you would say he'll be very shocked at this point. He'll be very disappointed. No, he loves it. And you know who he particularly likes? Man Ray. He loves Man Ray.

Can't get enough of him. They're both photographers, aren't they? Man Ray says, oh, I've invented a brilliant new tripod. And Theodore Miller is absolutely, it's not a euphemism, and Theodore Miller is absolutely delighted by this. Can't get enough of it. So that's all great. But there is a cloud. There are numerous clouds, actually. But this is one. euphemism and Theodore Miller is absolutely delighted by this can't get enough of it so that's all great but there is a cloud there are numerous clouds actually but this is one it's an Egyptian cloud so she ends up having a relationship in Paris with this guy called

Aziz Eloui Bey who's married a Circassian woman who are famously beautiful aren't they the Circassians they're very beautiful it was providing the slave girls in the harbors yeah exactly madness to divorce as a Circassian which is what this bloke does. He divorces his wife because he's so infatuated with Lee. But also by this point, Man Ray, he's all in. He's very possessive. And is Mr. Aziz, I mean, is he very rich? I think he is rich, yeah.

Is he very charming? Is he very suave? What is he? He's Omar Sharif. Dodi Al-Fayed. Well, yes, that's a slightly less, I think Omar Sharif is more, is a more enticing proposition than Dodi Al-Fayed, isn't he? Yeah. I mean, not dissing Dodi Al-Fayed, but Dodi Al-Fayed put up the finance for the Killingfields,

Chariots of Fire. Yeah, Chariots of Fire. And the producer said he was the laziest man he'd ever met in his life. He's always on yachts, isn't he? Yeah. Kind of hanging out in restaurants in Paris. Yeah. So anyway, she flees away from this love tug of war, tug of love.

She flees back to New York. She opens her own studio. So New York is now in the depths of the Depression. It's late 1932. There would have been soup kitchens, you know, starving people on the streets. She's not interested in that at all. She will, of course, be very interested in the gritty reality of life and capturing that in her photographs but not in 1932 so she's spending her kind of nights playing poker and

dancing and that kind of high life and a day society photos which again it's that kind of dorothy parker yeah wisecracking broads you know yeah speakeasies absolutely she really is kind of inhabiting every going cliche in the interwar years exactly and she's living it to the full she is absolutely then in the summer of 1934 to two years later this bloke aziz turns up in new york and they sort of rekindled their romance. She introduces him to her father. I don't know whether they bond over photography. I don't think they do. Yeah.

So is Aziz into photography? I don't think he is massively, actually. I think he's into Lee Miller. He's into Lee Miller. But also, here's an interesting thing. He's really into air conditioning. Is he? Yeah.

There can't be much air conditioning in Cairo at this pointro at this point no he's in on it early early adopter he has a contract from the egyptian government to provide a lot of air conditioning and this will become a theme of his later life um anyway interesting she introduces him to her parents and she says that mr adi she loves his air conditioning brilliant and uh her parents think oh a charming. And then to their astonishment, because they've met loads of her boyfriends, she goes off with him to the Egyptian consulate and gets married to him in New York. And everyone is astounded by that.

I mean, is it love? I think she's... I think it's a lark. Okay. A bit of a lark. Disappointingly, perhaps slightly prosaically, do you know where they go on their honeymoon? I do, because you've got it down on the notes. Yeah. Pretend you don't know. I don't dominate. Where where they go on their honeymoon? I do, because you've got it down on the notes. Yeah. Pretend you don't know. I don't, Dominic.

Where do they go on honeymoon? They go to Niagara Falls. To me, that's a bit coach party for a honeymoon, even in the 1930s. Yeah, but maybe it's ironic in a surrealist way. Yeah, like getting married in Las Vegas or something. It's slightly ironic, do you think? Yeah, I don't know. Anyway, they then go off to Egypt. So she's then in Cairo for the next three years.

Cairo. Cairo, yeah. She doesn't actually, it's not as glamorous and exotic as you would think. However, Dominic, however, she does take a photograph that will subsequently be employed by the great Belgian surrealist painter René Magritte in 1938. She does. I know she does. She does that in the desert, doesn't she?

Yeah. But we have a letter to her parents in 1935. She hasn't communicated to them for about a year. She says, I've spent an extremely happy and healthy year, my time being occupied between studying chemistry six mornings a week at the American University and three afternoon hours a week of Arabic. Also a great deal of poker and bridge. I think that's quite an impressive way to pass your time.

A year of doing chemistry? Come on, Dominic, you're not going to be doing chemistry. I wouldn bridge. I think that's quite an impressive way to pass your time. A year of doing chemistry? Come on, Dominic, you're not going to be doing chemistry. I wouldn't. I wouldn't. So I don't think you're in any position to throw stones. Okay. Well, she does do this more exciting. She's still keeping up with her photography.

So she goes to Jerusalem for a day. She goes to the monasteries in Sinai. Have you been to them? Yes, I have. You must be all over them. Yeah, I've filmed there, actually. Have you? So you've gone one better.

She was just taking still photographs. Yeah, I've one-upped and shit there. She goes somewhere I know you haven't been, the oasis of Siwa, where Alexander was proclaimed the son of Zeus Amon. And she takes all these fantastic photos of the desert.

So if you look at one of the books on Lima and Lanuga, her desert photographs, they're quite surrealist and they're very stark and very striking. They're obviously very much of their time. So it's kind of- Well, they're like a Magrita painting. Yeah, they're quite surrealist and they're very stark and very striking they're obviously very much of their time so it's kind of they're like a magrita painting yeah they're kind of windswept rocks in a sort of phallic formation and all this kind of thing

um clouds looming over the over the dunes all this sort of business that look like the naked female torso exactly exactly that's exactly what it is. Or the wings of a dove. But she's clearly, frankly, a bit bored with Mr. Mr. He's only so much air conditioning. Chat.

One can air conditioning banter. One can put up with, but talking of banter. So she sometimes goes back to Paris. And when she's in Paris, she meets this posh Englishman who has partly dyed himself. So this is Alexander Skarsgård. In the film.

In the film. Roland Penrose in reality, who has partly dyed himself bright blue for surrealist bants reasons. But not permanently. No, not permanently. So he's Roland Penrose. He is a Quaker. Quakers are such a theme of the rest of his history. He's a Quaker. Yeah, we love a Quaker. Quakers are such a theme of the rest of his history. He's a Quaker.

Yeah, we love a Quaker. Richard Nixon, Benjamin Lay. And also, he went to Queen's College, Cambridge, my alma mater. Really? Yeah. God, it all connects. Yeah. Cecil Beaton.

You filmed at Sinai. You kicked a ball over. I am shadowing Lee Miller's life. That's a terrifying image. So he's a Quaker. He's a conscientious objector. He's a tremendous friend of Picasso and of various surrealists. Because he's got an amazing collection, hasn't he?

Incredible. Yeah, and he goes on to become... He founds the ICA, doesn't he, or something? He does. He founds the Institute for Contemporary Art. He becomes the grand old man of British contemporary art. And just a spoiler, he has a tremendous war. He does, indeed.

So he's a funny mix because on the one hand he's a quaker so he's very formal and he's very kind of well-mannered on the other hand he's a surrealist so he loves dying himself blue so he's blue he's blue like an ancient britain i guess anyway they start this relationship and they go traveling the balkans and stuff and he actually comes out to egypt to see her and i think she must have with aziz the similar kind of man ray style open relationship because they're all tremendous friends and um in the spring of 1939 she says to aziz is talking about air conditioning units and she says i've got something to tell you i've decided to go and uh hang out with this blue guy yeah go to england with this blue quaker fair enough as. And Aziz says, you know, my dear, my dear,

I'm very pleased for you. I'll give you some money. And he even comes to Port Said to see her off on their boat to Southampton. So by the late summer of 1939, she has moved in with Roland in Hampstead, naturally. Does Mr. Aziz provide air conditioning? Do you need it in North London?

I don't believe you do. Probably not. And also there'd be no room for it. But Mr. Goldfinger. Yeah. He'd be all into it. They must be neighbors of Goldfinger. Yeah, I don't connect.

Anyway, there wouldn't be any room because his house is full of artworks. Picasso, Braque, Miro, Magritte, all of this stuff. And when she arrives in the house, she actually says, my God, you've got so many brilliant copies. They look like the originals. And he sort of says, my dear, they are the originals. But then, Tom, so I was reading all this in the biography and I was like, this is great. Love all this.

And then I turned the page and do you know what the sentence that I read next, Tom? The clouds of war were gathering. And they were. Of course they were. And the greatest adventure of lee miller's life was about to begin okay well let's take a break there and when we come back we will be looking at the extraordinary story of lee miller's record in the second world war and indeed rowland's

this episode is sponsored by our good friends at sky all because their new sky original film lee is available from friday the 13th of september only in cinemas now tom i know you love a red carpet premiere you've been to a few red carpet premieres thanks to the rest is history but you had a personal screening is that possible are you important? Well, as I mentioned in this episode, it was in Gary Lineker's private cinema at Goldhanger Towers, and it was a pretty luxurious experience. Well, I'll leave it to listeners to make up their own minds what they think of that. But Tom, what do you think of the film? It's really gripping. It kind of wonderfully conveys the sense of Lee Miller's life before

the war. And so what we talk about in this episode, the way in which she goes from being the cutting edge of the avant-garde, high society, all of that, to becoming this hard-boiled, almost kind of female GI, who goes absolutely into the heart of the Nazi darkness. It's really good. Yeah. And of course, it's photography like hers, kind of Second World War photography that lays the foundation for a lot of the kind of war correspondence

and war photography stuff that we associate with later conflicts. So Vietnam, for example. Yeah. So on the Vietnam War, there's an amazing sequence where she sees the first use of napalm in Sao Malo. And it's one of the kind of the great moments in the film.

So highly, highly recommended. Lee is out in cinemas from Friday, the 13th of September, and you can go to sky.com to find out more. The building we were in and all the others which face the fort were being spat at now. Ping, bang, hitting above our window, into the next, breaking on the balcony below. Fast, queer noise. Impact before the gun noise itself, following the same sound pattern, hundreds of rounds, crossing and recrossing where we were. Machine gun fire belched from the end pillbox. The men fell flat, stumbling and crawling into the shelter of shell holes. Some crept on, others sweeping back to the

left of the gun's angle, one man reaching the top. He was enormous, a square-shouldered silhouette, black against the sky between the pillbox and the fort. He raised his arm, the gesture of a cavalry officer with saber waving the others on. He was waving to death, and he fell with his hand against the fort. So that was Lee Miller writing in Vogue in October 1944. And she's describing the battle for San Marlo, which she is in the middle of it. And in the Kate Winslet film, this is what the film opens with, very dramatic kind of band of brothers style action sequence and dominic it's a huge contrast isn't it with all the uh the photography and the air conditioning and the psychoanalysis and blueness casso and blue quakers and stuff of the first half so what's going on how does she get

from all that to being shot at um in liberated France in 1944. Well, it's a remarkable story. And I suppose you could say in a way that's the story of Western society in the 1930s and 1940s in microcosm in one person's life. So the very abrupt transition from, as you say, that world of parties and photography and surrealist larks to the sort of deadly serious battle for sam arlo in 1944 it's quite striking bros i think i mean she's not really renowned as a writer but but she's influenced by i guess well she goes on doesn't she to do a kind of photo sequence after the war about joyce's dublin and there's a kind of the influence of modernist prose there yeah

Hemingway or something which is exactly what you'd expect or Hemingway yeah exactly and I think the other the striking thing it's in vogue that that report is that British vogue or American vogue yes British vogue okay so that's with Audrey Withers who's her editor yes so we so we left there in 1939 having arrived in uh britain and within weeks the the storm clouds of war have burst and um have broken they're broken yeah so britain's at war and she immediately volunteers her services to british vogue and actually what they use her to do is i mean this is a sign of the kind of phony war that at first, 1939, 1940, they're literally using her to take photographs of handbags. There'll be a sort of feature on nice new belts in the season.

And she's doing it because, of course, for most people, the war in Britain, the war has not yet impinged. The war is happening in Poland. It's somewhere else. But she does have Cecil Beaton being catty to her. Yes, that's right. He is consistently very catty. Pretty gruelling. But as late as sort of the summer, autumn of 1940. So after Dunkirk, after the Battle of Britain, during the Blitz,

you can open Vogue and there is no mention of the war at all. Very little mention of the war. So Vogue was actually bombed in October 1940 and production of the magazine didn't stop. Presumably because the assumption is that people want it as a reminder of the world of peace, the world of comfort, where you're not being rationed, where there aren't restrictions on the clothing you can buy. That's right. Certainly at first, I think. And I think that speaks to a wider issue, which is that in Britain in in particular in 1939 and the first part of 1940 the war is really happening at one remove and people don't want it to feel real you know they don't want britain to be like poland or wherever norway they want to preserve as you say a bit of

life but actually yeah a bit of normal life But Vogue has gone to subscription only because of print and paper rationing. So actually all this stuff that she's doing, it's good stuff, Tom, but it's not reaching the newsstands. It's exclusively for Vogue subscribers. So very much like the Rest Is History Club. Very much like the bonus episodes that we do for the Rest Is History Club.

Exactly. Which are actually the best, aren't they? That was the analogy that struck me. Yeah. That was completely the analogy that's going for the Restless History Club, exactly. Which are actually the best, aren't they? That was the analogy that struck me. Yeah. That was completely the analogy that's going to mind, organically. Anyway, she's very keen. You know, she has this curiosity and this ambition.

So she is keen to get out and actually chronicle the war. So that Ed Murray thing that we opened with. Yeah. Did she feel that she is doing her bit for Britain's war effort? I think so. I think absolutely. Because some of her images, they're perfect for the sort of propaganda efforts, particularly for rousing people in America. So if you'd look at the Grim Glory book that you began with, the most famous

photograph in there is called Revenge on Culture. And it's an image, again, that I think a lot of people may have seen, even if they don't immediately realize it was by Lee Miller it's a statue that has fallen and a kind of iron bar has has fallen across the statue as though it's cutting its throat and the breast of the statue has been kind of bruised and battered by a falling brick so it's just kind of lying amid the rubble and this photograph with the title revenge on culture it's kind of it's a it's an image a symbol of the nazi onslaught against western civilization and this went kind of viral as it were worldwide so it was even reproduced on the front pages of sort of egyptian newspapers and things and it was seen as a symbol of Nazi barbarism. Then there's a story that she did that ran as a big spread in American vogue.

It was about women, ATS women, auxiliary territorial service women, manning a searchlight in North London. Yeah. So not far from where she lived. And again, it's like ordinary women doing their bit for the war. And then she did things like she took photographs of henry moore the war artist in london underground stations so stuff like this and she is experimenting also i mean for people who are interested in photography the war sees tremendous advances in photography so there are new cameras like a there's a 35

millimeter leica camera which has a much faster lens and faster film speed so that you can take images, you know, you can improvise spontaneous pictures in a way that you couldn't have done 10 or 20 years earlier. So she's very good at that, at sort of taking pictures on the fly. And she's also kind of keen to write her own copy. You know, she doesn't want to see her pictures butchered by other people's copy. You know, that extract that I read, I think it's pretty good. Yeah, I think it is good.

She actually hates writing. She's quite good at it, but it's a really, it doesn't come, photography comes naturally because she's always done it with her father. And because you said this, she's always on the move, obeys her instincts. And I imagine, you know, the faster the speed at which she can take photographs, the better it suits her temperament, perhaps. Totally. Would that be fair?

I think that's absolutely right. I think that's exactly it that when she's actually rushing around taking photographs spontaneously she loves it and she's brilliant at it when she gets back to the hotel and she has to type i mean she ought to be massively over right so no i'm not one to criticize her for doing that but she will send vogue you know 10 000 words of copy to accompany a couple of images and they're like this is kind of too much we were hoping for about 500 um anyway what she really wants to do is to be a proper war correspondent you know she's fallen in love with that that that has given her i think a sense of mission and a sense of um a purpose that she's actually lacked all her life and i think one of the tragic things

about lee miller's life is that she's very restless the first part of it that's why she's hanging around with the air conditioning magnets in egypt and whatnot and then she has this brief moment during the war where she knows what she who she is and what she wants to do and then as we'll see after the war she's kind of restless and unfulfilled again and there are so many people like that, aren't there? There are, absolutely. Who live at their most vivid during the war. Absolutely. And then it's a terrible come down afterwards. It's a terrible letdown, yeah. Once the US joins the war, she gets accreditation to the US forces in Britain. But she's still quite frustrated because she's still stuck in britain and she wants to be kind of on the move and doing

exciting things and then d-day happens in june 1944 and that really is her break the liberation of europe is the moment where her career really comes alive and for her going back to france where she'd been so happy i mean it must be very very intense in the way it is say for hemingway yeah if it was somewhere else it wouldn't have the kind of resonance. Because she speaks the language. She's got lots of friends there. Yeah. And as we'll see, I mean, lots of her friends have had terrible experiences.

Yeah. Her French friends. Yeah. So it's really personal for her. But before she goes to France, so she goes over first in July and she goes to, she's sent on an assignment to cover US Army field hospitals in Normandy because of course the battle in Normandy is incredibly bloody even after D-Day and she's there for five days and she takes 35 rolls of film and she writes 10,000 words and she gives

this to Vogue and they are stunned they weren't expecting anything like this and they run it in two double page spreads in the next issue in the september issue and from that point onwards it's like she's found her meaning she even changes the way she dresses so all the sort of the stylish you know 1930s high society look that's all gone yeah she wears kind of battle dress you know prides herself on eating the same rations as the servicemen on kind of sitting around playing cards and that kind of you know almost like the routine of the war the the long stretches of boredom interspersed with sudden activity she loves all that that kind of world that the gi's it suits her temperament clearly yeah it absolutely does.

And she wangles this deal to go and cover what's going on in San Marlo. And actually, at this point, the Allies are kind of telling their public that San Marlo has been taken. But she gets there and she finds out it hasn't at all. Basically, the Germans are all in this citadel. And the US 83rd Division, US Army 83rd Division, are fighting this ferocious and incredibly brutal battle to get it. And so that bit that you read is her kind of in the thick of the action.

People are dropping dead around her. But also the really shocking thing I discovered from the book, the U.S. Air Force are using napalm. It's one of the first instances of the sustained use of napalm. Brilliantly done in the film, Dominic. Is it? Yeah, I mean, I can imagine it would be incredibly spectacular. And she, you know, takes photographs

and she writes about this. Because I had no idea napalm was being used that early. No, I didn't. I foolishly, just because I associated it with Vietnam, I just assumed. But no, the censors in London took out all her shots of the napalm being used because understandably they were like this is very bad publicity for our for our war efforts and actually because she had exceeded her instructions so she had gone into the

combat zone when she was meant to have been chronicling the restoration of civil order she actually gets in trouble and she gets temporarily put under house arrest in ren don't the british secret service worry that she might be communist as well or working for the of civil order. She actually gets in trouble and she gets temporarily put under house arrest in Wren. Don't the British Secret Service worry that she might be communist as well or working for the Soviets? Is that true or not? I'm not sure

that is true, actually. I haven't seen, certainly in the biography by her son, there's no evidence of that. I have seen, I think what's happened is I've read newspaper reports

about her name being in files, being in a list. But I think it's just, it's not like Charlie Chaplin being refused a re-entry to the United States or whatever it was. Right. Obviously, she has associated, perhaps in a less overt way than your Oppenheimers or something, she's associated with some pretty left-wing people.

I mean, that's what happens when you hang around with blue-painted Quakers in the salons of surrealist Paris, Tom. It's a kind of occupational hazard. But I don't think it massively holds her back or anything. Because she's let out again anyway, she gets to Paris for the liberation. And all her kind of surrealist pals are kind of surfacing from their studios

where they've been hiding away for the last few years. And they're really astounded when they see this woman. Yeah, this hard-boiled woman of accent. Is this the same lee miller who was kind of you know looking so stylish and getting up to all kinds of amusing but equally lee miller when she meets some of her friends finds them utterly changed as well so we mentioned solange the um the aristocrat you know the aristocratic epicenter of parisian life yeah and she had been arrested by the gestapo in 1942 because her husband the son of the eighth duke of nye had been in the resistance and there'd been an anonymous denunciation yeah and so he got sent off to belson where he died

just a few days before the uh before its liberation and she was in prison a good long time and lee miller found her she said you know she'd been terribly changed although she does I mean she goes back and then works in vogue after the war and yeah becomes a luminary of the trontocloriers and all that so well again I mean it's a good example of these people whose lives maybe seem so pampered and so luxurious they are embodiments of wider social kind of political changes that are affecting millions of people anyway she's there in paris and actually the sad thing is that she'd always loved paris and thought it was brilliant and all that stuff but actually now especially after sam arlo she actually finds it too tame she hasn't she's now addicted to the

adrenaline rush of you know combat and the horror and all that kind of thing and this is something that if you've ever read memoirs some war correspondents they will say how at first they're horrified and they find it so shocking but it becomes a kind of compulsive thing not for me not for you never again right i like how you're bracketing yourself there. You know, you're giving the impression you had a little flirtation with a life as a war correspondent. Well, kind of. I mean, you know, going into the Islamic State heartlands

when they're all hanging and rushing around capturing Westerners and chopping off their heads. I just thought, no, I'm too cowardly for this. He came back and did a podcast with me instead. That says it all, doesn't it? That's true courage. So she joins this, basically signs up to go along as an embedded photographer of the US Army

with this friend of hers, another photographer, a very good photographer called Dave Sherman. And all through kind of late 1944, 1945, they are moving through, for somebody from, you know, high society New York, I i mean this is an apocalyptic scene the roads choked the refugees villages bombed out bodies everywhere it's pouring with rain there's mud constant fighting but the worst is yet to come isn't it yeah constant fighting and she is loving it in a way i mean that's a weird thing to say because obviously it's horrible.

And she says she comments on the horror. But she feels a purpose, I suppose. Yeah. And if you read her writing, I think her prose captures this kind of weird, I don't know whether sensuousness is the right word, the sensuousness of the horror of war. She talks about the colors and the sound and all that stuff. But the kind of camera she now has, she can take photographs very rapidly in a way that technologically hadn't been possible before.

And so in that sense, she must feel that she is in a position to bring home to people away from the front what it looks like in a way that simply hadn't been possible before ever in history yeah i think that's true she has two cameras so she's taking with two shots all the time because she has 12 shots on a roll and she never wants to miss anything so she's taking loads and loads of photographs and i agree the photographs are capturing the horror of war in a way that even arguably in the first world war you you know, it'd been very, very difficult to do.

Certainly in even the very first kind of modern wars, the Crimean war, the US civil war, something it had been almost impossible to do. And even the way she writes, there's a visual quality to it. I'll never see acid yellow and gray again, like where shells burst in the snow without seeing also the pale quivering faces of the replacements, grey and yellow with apprehension, their fumbling hands and furtive, short-sighted glances at the fields they must cross. And the way she writes about the kind of the pitted,

cratered battlefield and stuff, it is, you know, the training in photography and surrealist art has kind of prepared her for all that in a weird way. And so, Dominic, we come now to probably, I mean, the greatest horror that she will see and the photographs for which perhaps she's most famous yeah which is the photos that she takes in dachau yeah and there is a sense with that isn't there that the horror is almost too great for pros to cope with. Yeah. Therefore, the role of photography becomes, I mean, seismically important.

I think it's massively important because, of course, documenting the reality of what the Germans had done and what the Nazis had done was so important in the denazification process and the idea that you have to show people the reality and merely describing it is not enough you have to you have to show not tell so you need proof don't you you yeah you need proof exactly because people won't believe what they're being told exactly

remember dachau is not a holocaust extermination camp dachau is a concentration camp one of the first set up after the beginning of the Third Reich. It's outside Munich, so it's in the kind of Nazi heartland. It was liberated on the 29th of April, 1945. She and Dave Sherman, her friend and colleague, they're in the first group of pressmen who are allowed into the camp. And the place is littered with bodies. So there were 39 railway cars full of dead bodies. Those people who are still alive in the camp are living in unimaginable squalor, riddled with cholera and typhus and utterly emaciated. I mean, it's a vision of hell is such a cliche.

It doesn't do it justice. Only the photographs do it justice, actually. And a lot of the photographers are physically sick. They struggle to even take the photos. She does it. of hell is such a cliche it doesn't do it justice only the photographs do it justice actually and a lot of the photographers are physically sick they struggle to even take the photos she does it and she sends this telegram with the photos back to vogue i mean the fact that they're being sent to vogue to audrey withers isn't it in london yeah andrea riseborough i think in the film isn't it you were saying yeah the fact that it's in vogue makes it all the more incongruous and horrific and she says i implore you to believe this is true because obviously she knows people

won't believe it anyway they've been to dachau and as i said it's just outside munich she and lee go into munich and they basically find a place you know there are soldiers everywhere u.s army whatever lots of people pouring into city. They find a billet in one of these apartments, loads of apartments being taken over. And it's at Prince Regent Square, number 27. And as her son's biography says, it seems like a very respectable place. It looks like a merchant or a retired clergyman lives there. And when they get in, they see that on the silver, it's all embossed with this monogram, A-H,

and there's swastikas everywhere. And it is Adolf Hitler's old apartment, which he had maintained in Munich while he was off in Berlin and the Wolf's Lair and all this. This is where he'd been hanging out when he was meeting up with Unity Mitford in the cafes and things. Right, yes. Oh, my word. I can't believe you've shoehorned Unity Mitford.

That is textbook Holland. Now, this is the image that lots of people have seen. She gets into the bath and has a bath. And the reason she has a bath is not because it's Hitler's bath. It's because she's covered with mud. The mud of Dachau. The mud of Dachau, yeah, you're right. And Dave takes a photograph of her with her boots in front of the bath and she's

looking out of the bath and of course this is the photo you'll often see now when you google lee miller because people are struck by the incongruity of this pioneering female photographer in hitler's bath i mean it's the one thing i think that that everyone will know about her maybe even more than the the dachau photographs but the interesting thing is that wasn't the photograph that really caught people's attention at the time or was it not no so at the time that photograph is not a great sensation and people don't all know about it at the time the photograph that goes viral as it were it's a shot they set up which is if they get a gi and they get him to lie on hitler's old bed reading mein kampf and with the telephone in one hand. And Dave took it and it

was in Life magazine and it was a huge, huge sensation. When did the Hitler bath one become as famous as it has become? I think it didn't become famous until Lee Miller became famous. Right. And Lee Miller didn't become famous until her son published this biography in the 1980s. Okay. Because as we will see, actually, if we'd done this podcast in the 1970s or 60s, nobody would have really heard of it. She was forgotten, which is an interesting story in and of itself.

So they go to Ava Brown's apartment and Lee has a nap on Ava Brown's bed. They then go out to the Berghof, the Eagle's Nest, Hitler's kind of mountain retreat. And it's being destroyed. It's razed to the ground by the US Army. And there's a fair amount of looting understandably people are taking souvenirs so dave takes um the complete works of

shakespeare in translation with hitler's book plate so hitler's copy of the complete well he's jewish isn't he so yeah um you know it's all the more personal for him and lee took um hitler's drinks tray which she kept for the and presumably the family still have hitler's silver well if you see the film it features well that's great so the war ends just a few days after that and her son in his biography says this was the great anti-climax of lee's life because after that point she has lost that wonderful precious but also horrifying sense of purpose that she had for that brief period of time she still is doing stuff for vogue and whatnot this is a good example of how what anti-climax it was the next assignment they

gave her they said go to Denmark and um you know take photographs showing how everything's going back to normal in Denmark now the war is over of course intrinsically that's not the same is it it's such a boring story yeah you know danish people are buying shoes again or whatever i mean it's not exciting and meanwhile dominic what about uh roland because we mentioned that he actually has a very interesting war because he's a conscientious objector so obviously he he's not in the army but he using his mastery of the visual arts he becomes senior lecturer at the camouflage development and training center at farnham castle in surrey yeah and um he has this color photograph of lee miller kind of painted in camouflage and uh kind of uses this as illustration of what you

can do yeah to disguise things because she's naked in the photograph. Yeah. And she's covered with this camouflage net. And he shows it to his students. And he says, if I can hide my friend Lee's charms with camouflage, then you can hide anything. Of course. So they're not married at this point.

No, they're not married. They're just good friends. She's married to Mr. Aziz still. Of course, with his air conditioning. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, God knows what's been going on with him. before she goes back to hamstead to north london you can see she's trying to rekindle the spirit of adventure if you think of that sort of third man you know vienna yeah bombed out

battered ravaged yeah and also i suppose the iron curtain starting to come down exactly all that so she goes to vienna she goes to budapest and she actually photographs the execution of the kind of fascist collaborationist prime minister she goes on into romania there tom uh she is massaged by a dancing bear really how did that happen she has a very bad back because she's been sleeping on the ground, traveling with the soldiers. And she meets somebody in Romania and they say, well, you've got a bad back. There's only one cure for a bad back,

and that's to be massaged by a dancing bear. And she actually finds... Now, the Romanian government had tried to outlaw dancing bears because they said it was a symbol of backwardness. What, so retrain them as massage therapists? No. No, the massage was always part of the dancing bear repertoire. Oh, I see.

Anyway, she finds this village and there's this bloke who's a Romany guy and he's got a dancing bear. And she gets the bear to massage her. And she wrote afterwards, the bear knew her business. She walked up and down my back on all fours as gently as if on eggs. And there's music playing. So the bloke's obviously playing some like violin or something. As the music started, she raised up on her high legs and shuffled up and down my back.

It was crushing and exhilarating. She said it was brilliant. It fixed her back. So if you've ever got a bad back, Tom. Right. Remember this. Get hold of a bear. Yeah.

Have you ever seen a dancing bear? No, I've never seen a dancing bear. I hobnobbed with a dancing bear at the Kaprischitz Folk Festival in Bulgaria. Did you? When I was backpacking. Yeah. Well, I mean, this is quite a theme that we could perhaps do an episode on, is dancing bears in the Second World War.

Because, of course, there's a very famous Polish bear who gets rescued. Oh, it's a Wojtek. Wojtek, who ended up having swims in in the river tweed directly below my scottish estate wow so he's he's very big in our neighborhood see even though we've done monkeys and dogs yeah we should do bears bears would be a great subject anyway dominic we're going off piste yeah basically she's rushing around she's trying to to get her adrenaline kick yeah try and relive old glories but she doesn't. The war is over. So how does she end up married to Roland Penrose?

Because she does, doesn't she? That's, I mean, they end up married and they live and die as a couple. She effectively has a breakdown in Bucharest. She gets all the way to Bucharest and she has a breakdown. She can't keep writing. She's run out of money. She's actually run out of options. She's gone almost, as it were, to the end of the line in an attempt to try and recapture this spirit of excitement.

And Dave, her old pal, says, you know, you've been ignoring Roland's letters. I think you should just go back to him now. And that's actually the one thing that she doesn't want to do is to settle down. She's never settled down all her life. I mean, the whole point of her is that she's this kind of free spirit but she has no other option so she goes back to hampstead roland who i have to say comes out of this incredibly well she's been ignoring all his letters and stuff but she says i'm back now and he says great well you know welcome home they have a son anthony they get married roland it's all brilliant for him he's been a tremendous hit with his camouflage in the war yeah yeah he fans the Institute for Contemporary Art he does loads of stuff for the British Council he becomes a big star of the arts world he ends up getting knighted

so it's onwards and upwards for him and some people may well say this is the classic story the man succeeds and the woman you know unbelievably talented in her own way is just forgotten which is exactly what happens because she's very she's empty she's depressed it's such a classic war correspondent story and they end up in a farm in sussex that's right full of picasso and hitler's drinks tray so but picasso is kind of coming over isn't he yeah all her old surrealist and artist friends from Paris are always coming over to this farmhouse in Sussex. And she's kind of rustling them up.

Weird kind of deep fried marshmallows or something like that. Yeah. So here's the interesting thing. She was a terrific photographer. And in the 1940s, her photographs had been sensations across the world and had been some of the defining images of the second world war but by the 1950s or 1960s that is completely forgotten and not least because she herself almost willfully tries to put it all behind her and to say it happened to somebody else who's long gone and all this kind of thing so So, yes, she's doing all this cooking and she's, you know,

basically almost like a housewife. That's what she is. But she's also drinking very heavily. Yeah, drinking very heavily. Piling on the pounds. Yeah, her sun paints are very unsparing. Well, you've got it here. I mean, her face no longer had its fineness.

Wrinkles and folds were proliferating and her eyes were becoming puffy. Her hair was getting thinner and lifeless. The fat was piling on, making her body look coarse and bulky. To make matters worse, the woman who had once been described as a snappy dresser was fast becoming a slob. I mean, that's no way to write about your mother, is it? Tom, if your own heirs write that about you one day you'd be very upset you'd be very upset right i think it's a really it's actually a very sad story and the saddest element of it for me is that she puts all her cameras in the cupboard never takes them out again she

refuses to take photographs again i mean she won't even take family photographs so people will say to her come on you love photography photography is your. You're actually one of the world's great photographers. But you can see that. I am reminded of Sir Geoffrey Boycott, the great England opening batsman, who, when he retired from cricket, put away his bat and has never picked it up since. Right. Well, that's the parallel that will immediately have occurred to him. You know, if you've played against the greatest bowlers, you don't want to be arsing around

on the village green. Yeah. And it may be the same kind of idea. But the interesting thing is that Geoffrey Boycott, Tom, was never one to downplay his own achievements. No, that's true. That's true. But Lee Miller, people go to her and they say, I understand you were a great photographer in the Second World War. I would really love to see your negatives.

I'd like to see the old pictures. And she says, they're all gone. They're all destroyed, which is not true. They're hidden away. And actually, she dies of cancer in 1977. She's 70 years old. And at that point, she is pretty much completely forgotten. I mean, her death is not a news story at all. And then her son basically decides to rescue her from obscurity and he finds 60 000 negatives in a box in the attic and he's like what oh my god and then he writes this biography in 1985 in which he says you know what a tremendous person she was an interesting life yeah his book really rescues her

and creates her creates the lee miller there's i mean there is a small kind of lee miller industry now and understandably so because she because she's a terrific photographer. And it's a great story because she's a woman. I think that's a really important part of the story, that she is a pioneering woman in a conflict that is seen almost entirely as a men's war, isn't it? Yeah. Quite wrongly.

But also the sense that her photographs, I mean, give you as vivid a sense as you can have in visual form of the horrors of the concentration camps and the heart of the Nazi darkness. Yeah. I mean, when did the photographs you took of that start to be associated with her name? Golly, I would say not until the 80s. Right. So the same. Yeah, I think it's the same thing.

I think you can't overestimate how much her name had disappeared and she had colluded in that you know she wanted to lock all that part of her away there's a kind of self-loathing there i think which is actually part of the tragedy really she's the kind of the female ernest hemingway that that that idea of the american Of the American who has been part of Parisian life before the war, who then rolls into liberated Paris and is making it into art. I mean, she's doing that in the way that Ernest Hemingway, because he's Ernest Hemingway, is famous for doing. So it's all, as you say, it's kind of wonderful that her attempt to sabotage her own reputation has been redeemed. So she's got the film now. Lee. It is called Lee, yes.

So that's the story of Lee Milliton. And we love a female protagonist on The Rest is History, don't we? We absolutely do. Nothing more. Especially one with songs. With songs, yeah. So we like photography, we like song. We're all about the arts.

And the good news for everybody is if you've enjoyed this on monday we will be back with a story of possibly the only person in world history more glamorous than lee miller but arguably the most famous female protagonist of the whole 20th century a woman whose life became synonymous with her country's political history. And that is the story of Eva Perón, Evita. And I have to say, it will feature, I don't know what the word is. I'm trying to, I'm groping for the word. It will feature performances by our very own Tom Holland. So on that bombshell, that was the story of Lee Miller. Next week, Evita.

Thank you all for listening and goodbye. Bye-bye.