Alvilde Lees-Milne

Alvilde Lees-Milne (née Bridges; 13 August 1909 – 1994) was a British gardening and landscape expert. Early life Alvilde was born on 13 August 1909 in London. She was the only child of the Lt.-Gen. Sir (George) Tom Molesworth Bridges, the Governor of South Australia from 1922 to 1927, by his wife Janet Florence Menzies, and was the great-niece of Robert Bridges, the one-time Poet Laureate. Personal life On 9 January 1933, Alvilde married Hon. Anthony Freskin Charles Hamby Chaplin, who would in 1949 become the 3rd Viscount Chaplin. They had one daughter, Oenone Clarissa Chaplin (1934-2021), who married Michael Charles Deane Luke (b. 1925), son of Sir Harry Charles Luke KCMG, of Hollingbourne Manor, in 1958. While married to Lord Chaplin, she met James Lees-Milne, who became her second husband, during World War II while she was engaged in an affair with the arts patron Princess Winnaretta de Polignac. By 1949 they were in love, but from the outset the relationship was not without complications. At one point the Chaplins, Lees-Milne, and Anthony Chaplin's girlfriend Hon. Rosemary Lyttelton all lived in the same house. Lord and Lady Chaplin divorced in 1950, whereupon the viscount married Rosemary Lyttleton (by whom he later had two daughters).