The Miss Harriet named after memories of a defiant three years old Hattie. Pictire from University of British Columbia collection
By Jeremy Miles
When I first met my lovely wife Hattie I was surprised to learn that there was a deep sea trawler fishing for salmon off the Pacific coast of British Columbia that had been named after her.
It’s not the kind of thing you expect to hear from a girl who grew up on a farm in rural Kent. Gradually I learned the full story and it was fascinating.
The 40-foot boat had been built by her Uncle John, a WWII veteran who became disillusioned with Britain after returning from distinguished Naval service to find a country that had little to offer. He emigrated to Canada in the 1950s and established a fishing business on Vancouver Island,
The Miss Harriet wheelhouse portrait
By the early 1960s he needed a boat that he could rely on for lengthy lone trips out into the ocean often over several days. He decided to name it the Miss Harriet after the little niece he remembered from his only visit back to the UK in 1956. He had been impressed that the then three-year-old Hattie had stubbornly refused to eat her bowl of porridge one morning. She had been defiant to the last and her mum (John’s sister) finally gave in.
John would later explain that such determination, stubbornness and tenacity were exactly the qualities you needed while fishing in the sometimes hazardous waters of the Pacific.
The Miss Harriet was launched in 1962 and for the next 40 years was a familiar sight sailing out of Nanaimo. In pride of place in the wheelhouse was a hand-coloured photographic portrait sent by John’s inspirational young niece.
After he died in 2000 that same original picture was returned to us. I found myself glancing at it with an eyebrow raised just the other day when, while listening to a radio report about kids who are fussy eaters, Hattie announced rather grandly that she had never been picky about food as a child.
I have long been intrigued by the life and work of the remarkable American model, muse, photographer and ‘friend of the surrealists’ Lee Miller. I was delighted when I heard that Kate Winslet was making a movie about Miller’s life and in particular her pioneering work as a female war photographer. That film Lee, years in the making, was finally released in UK cinemas this weekend. These are my thoughts on the film and Lee Miller’s background and wider history – Jeremy Miles
Elizabeth ‘Lee’ Miller was a complicated and troubled woman who lived an extraordinary life, careering with chaos and style through some of the best and worst that the 20th century could throw at her.
Born in upstate New York in 1907, Lee’s comfortable childhood was traumatised when she was raped by a family acquaintance. She was just seven years old.
This terrible ‘shameful’ secret – her mother warned her that she should never speak of it – seemed to instil a desperate need to escape.
Poster for the film Lee whjch is currently on release in UK cinemas
Disruptive behaviour saw her expelled from school and as soon as she could this sharply intelligent, determined and beautiful young woman was off to establish a glamorous international life as a photographic model. Not an easy thing to achieve but from an early age Lee seemed to possess an intuitive ability to charm and talk her way past apparently insurmountable barriers. She soon found herself in Paris posing for the leading fashion magazines of the day. She became a favourite of the pioneering surrealist photographer and artist Man Ray and was soon not just his model but his muse, his lover, his assistant and collaborator.
Her own work as a photographer took her across Europe and North Africa and the Middle East shooting everything from fashion to travelogue and honing her already finely attuned surrealist eye.
But where to next? The outbreak of war in 1939 would change everything. Living in London with her soon to be new husband, the art historian Roland Penrose, Lee felt helpless to contribute to the war effort but was determined to try and photograph the action in occupied France.
Somehow she managed to persuade Vogue magazine to commission her as a war photographer. With the help of photographic colleague and friend David Scherman who worked for Life magazine, she also secured American military accreditation and putting herself at enormous risk became a war correspondent and that rarest of creatures, a woman photographer working on the front line, almost unheard of in the 1940s.
Andy Samberg as David Scherman and Kate Winslet as Lee Miller. Publcity shot for the film Lee.
She photographed under fire and bombardment amid the blood and gore of the French battlefields, taking unflinching shots of amputations and makeshift surgery in field hospitals, the piles of rotting bodies in the brutal disease-ridden hell hole that was the newly liberated death camp at Dachau.
She returned from war exhausted and horrified by the things she had seen but with a huge set of historic and truly iconic photographs. They included the famous portrait of Lee herself sitting defiantly in Hitler’s bath taken by David Scherman after the pair had talked their way into the Fuhrer’s Munich apartment on the day of his suicide.
Her stunning war images were eventually published with Lee’s own accompanying text in a spread in American Vogue. It shocked, informed and finally framed Miller in the public eye as a fearless photographer and campaigner who refused to be defined or indeed confined by her gender.
Sadly the punishing ordeals she had put herself through and the demons that raced through her troubled mind proved all too much.
Lee returned to the UK and finally settled with Penrose at Farley’s farmhouse in an idyllic corner of East Sussex. They often played host to their illustrious friends from the pre-war art world, people like Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst and Juan Miro. Lee took photographs and served lavish meals becoming a skilled gourmet cook.
But she found little peace. She was suffering from what would now be seen as classic symptoms of PTSD and was often moody, unpredictable, drinking heavily and prone to bouts of depression.
Her war experiences were, like the terrible childhood rape, packaged away and never spoken of and Lee became a largely forgotten figure to the outside world. To those who did remember her she was just someone who had once been a fashion model.
It wasn’t until after her death in 1977 that Lee and Roland’s son, Anthony Penrose, discovered a huge collection of her war photographs stashed in the attic. He has since worked tirelessly to preserve the astonishing archive she amassed over her long and varied working life to reinstate and preserve her artistic reputation.
Kate Winslet’s film Lee, which I saw yesterday, concentrates on the war years and is largely based on Penrose’s book The Lives of Lee Miller.
It has received mixed reviews with some critics, unfairly in my opinion, dismissing it as being superficial and failing to create a true characterisation of the enigmatic Lee Miller. But how could it? I suspect no one, not even her family and friends, got to know the real Lee.
I think Winslet does an excellent job telling an extraordinary story and delivers a powerful performance in the title role. Lee is beautifully filmed with painstaking reconstructions of several of her most striking photographs. There’s a stellar supporting cast too with particularly fine performances from Andy Samberg as David Scherman and Andrea Riseborough as the tirelessly supportive wartime Vogue editor Audrey Withers. Josh O’Connor meanwhile is perfect as Anthony Penrose and sets the context and scene in an imagined posthumous discussion with his ageing and alcoholic mother in the living room at Farleys
Winslet spent seven long years battling to get this film on screen working with director Ellen Kuras and to me the entire project exudes an appropriate sense of determination and commitment. Do go and see it if you possibly can.
Farleys House at Muddles Green. Photo: Jeremy Miles
If you want to know more about Lee Miller head for the East Sussex countryside and Farleys Farm. Lee and Roland moved there in 1949 and is still home to Anthony Penrose, the Lee Miller Archives and The Penrose Collection.
The House & Gallery and Garden are open every Thursday, Friday and Sunday (April – October) offering visitors the chance to take a tour of the house, relax in te garden and enjoy exhibitions in the gallery.
Farleys House & Gallery is at Muddles Green, Chiddingly, East Sussex, BN8 6HW. It’s just off the A22 between Uckfield and Hailsham and about a 20 minutes taxi journey from Lewes Station.
The Miles brothers Jeremy (left) and Simon back in the early 1970s. Photo: Hattie Miles
Words: Jeremy Miles
Something very strange will occur this weekend. Tomorrow my little brother is celebrating his 70th birthday, a landmark that he will no doubt take in his stride but one that is suddenly making me feel rather old.
For Simon is more than three-and-a-half years younger than me and if he really is 70 (and sadly the calendar doesn’t lie) it must mean that I am rattling at full tilt towards an age where delusions of youth frankly no longer cut it.
I can’t pretend any more. What I can do though is wonder how the hell this happened and muse on two lives that have followed parallel but very different paths in the creative world.
Simon and Jeremy in 1955. Photo: Bill Stokes
One minute Simon and I were children of the 50s and 60s and now what seems like a mere handful of years later, a half a century has passed and although we don’t feel particularly ancient, the heroes of our youth are making frequent appearances in the obituary columns alongside gradually increasing numbers of our direct contemporaries. It kind of tells you something and it is just a little uncomfortable. Where did those years go and how did it come to this?
Today I am a writer looking back on a career that has covered social history, theatre, music and visual arts with a wonderful series of travel gigs thrown in for good measure. It’s been a good life and thankfully it’s still just about chugging along.
Simon is an award winning lighting designer who can reflect on a long and illustrious Emmy-laden Hollywood career which has involved lighting stage, TV shows and videos featuring Sinatra, Streisand, Ray Charles, Michael Jackson, Liza Minnelli, Kylie Minogue, Michael Buble, Joan Baez and many others. There have also been long-running television variety series like Dancing with the Stars and The Masked Singer.
Feeding pigeons in Trafalgar Square c.1960
It wasn’t always like this of course. After a classic and comfortable post-war upbringing in a family that loved books and theatre, we both started out like so many of our generation seeking adventures in rock and roll. I wrote about it and Simon lived it.
He toured the UK and Europe with everyone from Caravan and Barclay James Harvest to Iggy Pop and Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith. He worked with Blondie, Madness, Wire, Simple Minds, Lene Lovich and Status Quo – a curious slew of musical styles but they all needed lights.
In those early days it was all hair, flares and cheap and sometimes desperate living arrangements. It was tough at times. There was very little money but plenty of grand plans and good friends. To this day memories of those times bring back a distant nostalgic whiff of hashish and patchuli – the pervading bouquet of that unique era that just happened to coincide with our youth.
Slowly we both established our separate ‘grown-up’ careers and since 1981 Simon has lived in California. He has a CV that is considerably more impressive than mine but we’ve both had very interesting lives and met and worked with some fascinating people.
The brothers Miles 21st century version. Photo: Hattie Miles
All in all we’ve both done pretty well. What’s more we’ve never been competitive and even though we live on different continents and don’t see each other as often as we’d like we always enjoy each other’s company.
He’s also a great guy: intelligent, informed, witty, tack-sharp and fun to be with. Not just my brother but one of my favourite people. I hope that his 70th birthday is an absolute blast even if it does make me feel old.
