A loyal friend: The extraordinary life of Walter Lees

Published on Monday 12 July 2010 20:22

As Christies prepares to auction the collection of modest Scot Walter Lees it becomes clear that the story of this war hero, royal confidant and companion to the stars, is worthy of a Hollywood biopic, discovers Tim Cornwell

• Walter Lees

THE DEATH of Walter Lees, the Edinburgh joiner's son who became a war hero, diplomat, intimate of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, and a fixture of post-war Parisian society, went unnoticed by the obituary writers earlier this year. But an auction of his art, design and furniture collection next week, with 235 lots from the cave of treasures he assembled in apartments in Paris and later London, promises new exposure for the extraordinary story of a very well-travelled Scot.

The former Leith Academy schoolboy became friend and facilitator for fashion kings or business tycoons, for Britain's Royals as well as the former Edward VIII and his mistress Wallis Simpson. He was a close friend to dancer Margot Fonteyn; worked for actor Yul Brynner, and was portrayed in a novel by Nancy Mitford.

Lees, who died in London in February at 93, after battling illness for a decade, did not perhaps make history or headlines, nor did he collect the kind of art that will make millions. The Christie's sale on 16 July is expected to make perhaps 5-800,000, with proceeds set to help his favourite charities, Save the Children and particularly Crisis, with whom he often spent Christmas helping the homeless.

But the stories of his life range from his escape and brutal recapture as a Second World War POW - when two fellow officers were executed - to his first, unwilling meetings with the Windsors, whom he would entertain at Highland dances after dinner, as a valued companion.

His Edinburgh nephew, Ian Lees, told The Scotsman one story that he said captured Walter Lees' generosity, friendship, and sense of fun. The dancer Dame Margot Fonteyn came to dinner at his Paris flat with her Panamanian husband Dr Roberto Arias, a wheelchair-bound quadraplegic after an assassination attempt.

"His flat was not very accessible," said Lees, whose family is now trying to learn more about their exuberant uncle. "He got the French fire brigade to lift him into the party through the window and everyone burst into spontaneous applause. These kind of things he would do off the cuff."

Walter Lees' father, William, was a joiner who worked for the old Edinburgh trams. But his decision to volunteer to fight, a few days after the outbreak of the Second World War, took his son on a completely different path.

"High School Yards Edinburgh - enlisted with the British Army as a volunteer and given the King's Bounty of six shillings - all this completely unknown to my family who became very concerned by my impulsiveness," he later wrote, in notes on his life for a book that he never finished.

"My grandmother immediately announced she would telephone General Fortune at Edinburgh Castle and inform him that I had enrolled in the army under false pretences."

Enlisted as an ordinary soldier, trained and promoted to a 2nd Lieutenant in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, he fought at the great battles of El Alamein and El Akarpwia, suffered shell shock, and won the Military Cross. Captured in North Africa in 1943, he staged an escape from a transport train in Italy with two close friends, Arnold Vivian and Norton Brabourne. All were recaptured, and the others were shot dead that night. "I was beaten up - nose and head - and put back in my old cattle truck as an example to those who might escape," he wrote.

He was sent to Colditz and then on to the Oflag VA camp. After a stay that ranged from Highland dancing sessions, to suffering "persecution mania" and dealing with Gestapo informers, along with being strafed by planes of both sides, he was freed at the end of the war.

After post-war service in Palestine and Cairo, the decorated Scottish soldier became an attache at the British Embassy in Paris, where he would live for 50 years.

In the post-war city the presence of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor - the former Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson - was a thorny diplomatic problem for the British Embassy, The Foreign Office's instructions were to treat the couple with respect, but at arms' length - specifically, to ask them to dinner just once a year.

In 1948 the Duke of Windsor came to Ambassador Oliver Harvey with a request: was there a willing, single, Embassy diplomat, whom he could ask to their dinner parties from time to time? Harvey suggested Lees.

Meeting the Windsors was not a task Lees looked forward to; they were not popular in British society. "My first dinner party at the Windsor House, Rue de la Faisanderie, was a nightmare, and I did not like my fellow guests," he wrote. "I prayed I might never ever have to return there. When I wrote to my parents giving an account of this dinner party, my father, in particular, said I must not repeat this performance."

But items on show in the Christie's catalogue speak differently - with notes of thanks for marmalade or birthday gifts, a telegram demanding his presence for Boxing Day dinner in 1951, a signed photograph "To Walter" in 1964. He arranged for a piper to play for the couple, who adored Scottish music, as well as an English choir to sing carols on Christmas; the Duke left Lees his kilts, which were passed on to the Museum of Scotland's collection.

Lees insisted that he hated the attention, and loathed the hangers-on around the couple. He knew his friendship with them would set the gossips going, but he wrote: "I myself felt loyal to them because they were kind to me, but I still thought, and still do, how very lucky we were to have King George and Queen Elizabeth with our present Queen to follow."

In 1957 Lees helped organise the young Queen Elizabeth II's resoundingly successful state visit to Paris. He was rewarded with the Royal Victorian Order, a reward for personal service to the Monarchy. His return trips to Edinburgh, Ian Lees, said were often on the way to Balmoral.

Later he left the embassy for better pay, as the personal assistant to the shipping magnate Stavros Niarchos, and then to the actor Yul Brynner, at the height of his Hollywood fame. He continued the same post - as a kind of private equerry, facilitator, and adviser, with the oil tycoon Pierre Schlumberger, whose high-spending wife Sao had a passion for fashion and art.

Throughout it all, he collected. There are the bronze tables and chairs he commissioned from Diego Giacometti, brother of Alberto, now priced at up to 50,000 a piece. There are the photographs and personal correspondence from the Windsors; Old Master drawings, stunning Georgian silver, Louis XVI ormolu gilt furnishings, Venetian glass, Indian art. The lots include commissions from top Parisian designers, as well as Lees' own photographs, which he took as he travelled the world and showed in private exhibitions.

Lees never married. His closest friend was the dress designer Hubert de Givenchy, whom he met with Brynner, a master of haute couture who designed for Grace Kelly, Jackie Kennedy, and Audrey Hepburn - including the latter's costume in Breakfast at Tiffany's.

"Walter, who was such a dear and special friend, had perfect taste - sober, simple, elegant and refined," he writes in the auction's catalogue. "Travelling together, discovering antiques and rare objects was a joy that we shared with one another, his well-trained eye always finding the most unusual and tasteful things."

Encouraged by a friend to write notes for an autobiography - he never finished more than a couple of pages - Lees listed friends and connections that ranged from the Archbishop of Canterbury, Edith Piaf, and Fitzroy Maclean, to Diana and Oswald Mosley. Diana's sister, Nancy Mitford knew him well when he was in the embassy and modelled the character of Philip – a charming and highly accomplished diplomat – on him in her great comic novel Don't Tell Alfred.

A California cousin, John Farnkopf, who spoke at his memorial service, says Lees life was valued - along with his collection - for friendships. "He was known for a broad circle of friends, and being a good friend. His friends were his family.

"He was somebody who could be valued for his advice, and his advice was relied on. He was very discreet, and people appreciated that. He was not one to create secrets, or gossip, or spread rumours. And he had a wonderful eye."

James Knox, managing director of the Art Newspaper, was a family friend. Lees, he said, in some respects left little trace, with many mysterious areas to his life. He called him "an incredibly inventive and resourceful Scot". "His background was fairly modest in Edinburgh," Knox said. "He didn't care one jot that he came from humble background. He adored anything to do with Scotland, as a Scot who could deal with Dukes and Duchesses and billionaires."