Previous Lot Next Lot

Auction: 17047 - The Official Honours and Related Film Awards Bestowed upon Sir Christopher Lee, C.B.E., C. St. J. (1922-2015)
Lot: 49

THE HONOURS & AWARDS BESTOWED ON SIR CHRISTOPHER'S FATHER

'My father was a tremendous natural athlete. At Radley Public School, at the Royal Military Academy of Sandhurst, in the Army and around and about he garnered a massive pile of cups and trophies. He was a champion at squash, fives, racquets, court tennis, epee, foil and sabre - and bayonet!'

Sir Christopher Lee's Lord of Misrule, refers; see his father's associated prize medals listed below.

A fine Boer War and Great War campaign medal group of five awarded to Lieutenant-Colonel G. T. Lee, King's Royal Rifle Corps

Severely wounded with the Mounted Infantry at Jackalsdam, South Africa in September 1901, he went on to command the 46th Battalion, Australian Imperial Force on the Somme in 1916, services that won him the French Croix de Guerre

Queen's South Africa 1899-1902, 4 clasps, Cape Colony, Orange Free State, Transvaal, South Africa 1901 (Lieut. G. T. Lee, K.R.R.C.); 1914-15 Star (Capt. G. T. Lee, K.R. Rif. C.); British War and Victory Medals, M.I.D. oak leaf (Lt. Col. G. T. Lee); France, Croix de Guerre 1914-1918, with star on riband, mounted as worn, together with the recipient's silver identity bracelet, inscribed 'Lieut. Col. G. T. Lee, 46th Battn. Australian Infy. & King's Royal Rifles', and ANZAC commemorative medallion, by Dora Ohlfsen, bronze, in fitted case, the dated clasp on the first a tailor's copy, generally very fine or better (7)

Geoffrey Trollope Lee was born in London on 29 October 1879, the son of Ellis and Constance Helen Trollope Lee. Educated at Radley and the R.M.C. Sandhurst, he was commissioned in the King's Royal Rifle Corps (K.R.R.C.) and first saw action in the Boer War.

Assigned to the Mounted Infantry with an appointment as a Lieutenant in the 4th Battalion, K.R.R.C., he saw action in the Transvaal and was severely wounded at Jackalsdam on 4 September 1901 (Queen's Medal & 3 clasps).

In 1910, Lee married Estelle Marie Carandini di Sarzano, 'a classic beauty' who sat for such artists as Oswald Birley and Lavery.

Lee commenced the Great War as a Captain, but would rise to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel with command of a battalion before the war's end. He was embarked for Egypt in April 1915, where he was attached to the Australian Imperial Force (A.I.F.) and given command of the 46th Battalion. A glimpse of his time with the Battalion is to be found in Sir Christopher Lee's autobiography, Lord of Misrule:

'The batman was called Smith. As if this were not anonymous enough, he was never granted any other name when the family spoke of him. Yet he and my father were deeply attached to one another through the deepest mire of the stalemate in France. He was a lean, wiry individual with a high polish on his complexion from constant exposure to sun and sand. As an Australian he was naturally no respecter of persons.

It happened that Smith was delegated by fate to be minding of his own business where my father was bound to trip over him when he strode into the Australian camp near Mina, in Egypt, to take up his new command. My father's majority was newly gazetted and he was the first British officer to be given the somewhat volatile assignment of readying for battle a batch of Australian soldiers regarded as a rabble by the War Office but whom a prudent person would recognize as an assembly of extremely rough, tough private citizens in uniform.

He arrived to find nothing but a lot of tents in a sea of sand, with the Pyramids propping up the canopy of heaven and no humans visible anywhere. He identified a large tent as the Orderly Room, but there was nobody in that either to welcome or challenge him. He moved on to the next tent, which was making a half-hearted attempt to be an office. The effect of chairs and tables and in-trays and out-trays was spoilt, however, by the office's sole occupant, a man squatting on his hunkers wearing only socks and shorts while languidly caressing a pair of boots with a strip of wadding. He did not look up. 'Where's the Orderly Room N.C.O.?' asked my father.

No answer.

'Is there a duty officer about?'

The trooper turned the boot around on his hand, and proceeded on his slow way with the cloth.

'I'm the new commanding officer,' my father remarked.

The Australian did look up for a moment, but only to return with greater concentration to his previous interest.

My father made one of those swift transitions from civility and amiability to explosive rage which seem to be characteristic of all members of the family.

'I don't know,' he barked, 'who you are or what you think you're doing here but if you aren't on your feet in something under five second you're for it!'

'Hot, ain't it?' said Smith compassionately.

Luckily this appealed to my father and it was the beginning of a durable association. Maybe it was lucky too for Smith that he had this confrontation and was elected to the vacant position of personal slave because the confrontation with the unit as a whole was a fearsome grind. The new commander had been schooled all his life to believe that discipline and unquestioning obedience were the keys to victory. He meant to have it from his hybrid 'imperial' force. To get it he often pegged men out on the sand during the heat of day.

One trooper who objected to this treatment assaulted him with a bayonet. My father knocked him out and put him on a charge. It's not easy to imagine oneself back into the skins of warriors of another age, but perhaps it's not sentimental to think that this fellow would also have been ready to fill the position of batman, if it had not already been taken.

At all events the 46th Battalion of the 12th Brigade of the 4th Australian Division did not let their foster colonel (as I think of him) down when it came to action in the trenches. On 30 June 1916, they invested the village of Pozieres on the Somme, which the Allies had coveted for months and failed to take at great cost in men. This time they got through and forty or so men lived to share in the jubilation. The regiment picked up a D.S.O., and Marshal Foch himself drove on to the field tom present my father the Croix de Guerre.'

In December 1916, Lee took command of the 16th Battalion, K.R.R.C., in which capacity he remained on active service in France until June 1917. In addition to his award of the French Croix de Guerre, he was twice mentioned in despatches (London Gazettes 21 April 1916 and 4 January 1919, refer) and awarded the Egyptian Order of the Nile.

Lord of Misrule continues:

'He was not quite forty when he retired, in 1919. From then on he confined himself to cricket and golf, and blazing away at wildlife. As a young man about to receive his first commission he had, almost inevitably, come top of musketry tests, and the game books of the great country houses of the days of Edward VII and King George V show him as one of the best half-dozen shots in the land. This in itself, even without my mother's dark Italianate beauty, would have been sufficient to get them invited to some agreeable spread every weekend of the season.'

Sadly, however, as Sir Christopher Lee would recall in Lord of Misrule, his parents divorced when he aged six years.

The Colonel died in London on 12 March 1941.

Sold with an impressive array of related sporting prize awards, comprising:

(i)
Royal Military College Sandhurst, R.M.C. v R.M.A. Racquets Medal, 1899, named 'G. T. Lee', silver, 70mm.

(ii)
Woolwich and Sandhurst Athletics Medals (2), for Cricket, 1899, named 'G. T. Lee (Capt.)', silver, 50mm.; another similar, for Association Football, 1898, named 'G. T. Lee' bronze, 50mm.

(iii)
Army Athletics Club, Public Schools Fencing Competition Medals (3), for Sabre v. Sabre 1897, 1st Prize; for Sabre v. Sabre 1898, 1st Prize, and for Foil v Foil 1898, 1st Prize, all three named to 'G. T. Lee, Radley College', silver, 45mm.

(iv)
Lord Roberts Challenge Cup for Young Soldiers, inscribed to the '4th King's Royal Rifles', silver, 30mm.

(v)
R.W.G.C. Handicap Challenge Bowl, named to 'Capt. G. T. Lee, 1914', silver, 23mm.



End of Sale


Subject to 20% VAT on Buyer’s Premium. For more information please view Terms and Conditions for Buyers.

Sold for
£2,200