Iconographer, archaeologist and preservationist. Didron initially studied for the church at the seminaries at Meaux and Rheims. In 1826 he moved to Paris in order to study Greek and Latin, working as a teacher. In Paris he met Victor Hugo (1805-1885) in 1831 who encouraged him to study the medieval buildings of Normandy. Didron became fascinated with archaeological method for the middle ages, a discipline developing in France since the establishment of the Société Royale des Antiquaires de France in 1814.

Architectural Historian and preservationist; diarist. Lees-Milne was eldest son of George Crompton Lees-Milne (1880-1949), a Lancashire mill-owner, and Helen Christina Bailey (Lees-Milne) (1884-1962). He attended Lockers Park boarding school (Hempstead Hertfordshire), Eton College, 1921-1926, and Grenoble University, 1927-1928, before entering Magdalen College, Oxford. He graduated in modern history in 1931. A chance discovery of a brutish renter desecrating a William Kent building in north of Oxford purportedly led Lees-Milne to vow to preserve the country houses of England.