THE HONOURS & AWARDS BESTOWED ON SIR CHRISTOPHER'S FATHER 'My father was a tremendous natural athl

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'