The Lives of Lee Miller by Antony Penrose

Described by the Sunday Times as 'a fascinating revelation of an adventurous and protean spirit’, this biography is the inspiration behind the 2024 film Lee, starring Kate Winslet as Lee Miller.

Beautiful, bewitching and an exceptionally good photographer, Lee Miller was one of life’s adventurers.

She became a Vogue cover girl in 1920s New York before embracing Paris, photography and Surrealism, and then dramatically changed her life yet again, reinventing herself as a war correspondent, notably covering the liberation of Dachau.

These are but three of the many lives of Lee Miller, intimately recorded here by her son, Antony Penrose. Featuring a selection of Miller’s finest work, including portraits of her friends Picasso, Tanning and Ernst, Penrose’s tribute to his mother brings to life a uniquely talented woman and the turbulent times in which she lived.

In 2007 the V&A hosted the exhibition The Art of Lee Miller, to honour the centenary year of Miller's birth. Curated by Mark Haworth-Booth, the exhibition was accompanied by a portfolio of six silver gelatin prints, representing a cross section of Miller's extraordinary photographic career, which are now in the museum's permanent Photography Collection. In the video below, Miller's granddaughter Ami reveals the stories behind some of Lee Miller's most incredible photographs, held at both the V&A and at her house in Sussex, now the home of the Lee Miller Archives.