Exhibition: The Jennie Lee Archive Collection

The first photo on this page shows Jennie’s parents, James and Ma Lee, sometime in the 1930s. In later life Jennie’s parents moved to England to live with her and her husband, Nye Bevan, at Lane End Cottage near Reading. The second photograph on this page shows James and Ma Lee at Lane End Cottage c.1940.

Jennie’s father’s health had been affected by the years working in the pits and he died in 1952. Her mother died in 1962 following a long battle with breast cancer.

It is easy to imagine that Jennie’s brother, Tommy Lee, must have grown up over shadowed by his brilliant and charismatic older sister. When he was 18, Tommy emigrated to Australia where he married and raised a family. The archive collection contains some correspondence between Jennie and Tommy from 1940 to 1966. They had an increasingly difficult relationship in adult life.

The third photograph on this page shows Tommy, probably in his twenties. On the reverse of the photo Tommy wrote to Jennie: “Your bro Tommy xxxx”