Valentine (Nicholas) Lawford 1911 - 1991
Valentine Lawford by Horst My uncle Valentine, who died in 1991, was a most interesting character. Gay - long before it was fashionable or even legal - brilliant (a double first) and extremely cultured. He was educated at Repton and Corpus Christi, Cambridge where he read modern and mediaeval languages, and compeleted his studies at the Sorbonne, Strasbourg and in Vienna. In 1934 he joined the Foreign Office and in 1936 was posted to the embassy in Paris, where he became friends with a wide circle of artistic and fashionable people such as Gertrude Stein, the Duff Coopers, Sir Charles and Elsie Mendl, Douglas Fairbanks, the Rothschilds, Coco Chanel, the de Castellanes and the Windsors. We have a letter to him, inviting him to dine at Maxim's, signed 'Wallis Windsor'. He was particularly close to Nancy Cunard , who gave him some fine presents, such as a bronze of Napoleon on horseback and an antique map of Scandinavia (c.1700) He was summoned back to London in Sept...