Lee Miller: surrealist photographer, war correspondent, and gourmet chef

Antony Penrose grew up knowing little about his remarkable mother Lee Miller, who had studied with Man Ray in Paris, and become a model, a photographer, and a war correspondent. But then an unexpected find in the family attic changed everything. (R)

Lee Miller was a Vogue model, a photographer, and a war correspondent who studied in Paris with her lover, Man Ray, lived in Egypt, and captured some of the most searing images of the holocaust.

Recently she has become famous in pop culture for her glamour and her iconic photographic images. 

But there is much more to her story. 

Lee's son Antony grew up on a farm in East Sussex as the son of Lee and the surrealist painter Roland Penrose.

His relationship with his mum was often strained, as Lee was then struggling with PTSD and alcohol addiction. 

She eventually lifted herself out of her drinking and when she became sober, she swapped her camera for the kitchen and became an experimental chef of some renown in the last years of her life.

Soon after Lee's death at the age of 70,  Antony's wife made a chance discovery of thousands of photographic negatives and some of Lee's manuscripts in a family attic.

It became a rich seam of material for the family to begin to begin to understand Lee's multi-faceted life story.

Antony now devotes his working life to Lee's legacy. 

Some years ago he wrote an acclaimed biography of her called 'The Lives of Lee Miller'.

This episode of Conversations touches on new films, film recommendations, family legacy, epic life story, origin stories, Man Ray, WWII, the Holocaust, Lee Miller, motherhood, family, PTSD, war correspondence, war photography, Kate Winslet and Ellen Kuras.