If you were a screenwriter or playwright pitching a drama about an eventful mid-20th-century life – a story along the lines of William Boyd's Any Human Heart, perhaps, but with a woman rather than a man at the centre – what would you come up with? Difficult childhood (sexual abuse). Becomes a New York fashion model. Goes to Paris and joins surrealist movement. Does photojournalism during second world war (is present for the liberation of Dachau; takes a bath in Hitler's abandoned house). Has first and only child at 40. Settles on a farm in Sussex. Reinvents herself as a gourmet cook.
Too implausible a storyline, surely. A woman who was a fashion icon, a surrealist and a war correspondent? But this was the life of Lee Miller – or, to borrow the title of Antony Penrose's 1988 book, The Lives of Lee Miller. Penrose, son of Miller and the British artist Roland Penrose, didn't find her an easy mother. She was often away and, because of depression and alcoholism, would be absent even when home. But since her death in 1977, he has been diligently preserving and collating her work. Discovered in the attic after her death, it consists of over 60,000 original negatives, 20,000 prints and contact sheets, and thousands of original documents and manuscripts.
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