Valentine George Lawford was born in Chorleywood, Hertfordshire on 27 February 1911, the son of Captain Vincent Adrian Lawford RN and Agnes Jane (née Mapplebeck). He was educated at Repton School; Corpus Christi College, Cambridge; the Sorbonne, in Paris; and in Strasbourg and Vienna. He lived with his partner, the photographer Horst P. Horst, and they had one adopted son.

He joined the Foreign Office, in 1934, and his first posting was as Third Secretary of the British Embassy in Paris, 1936-9. On his return to London in 1939, he became Assistant Private Secretary to the Foreign Secretary working for Lord Halifax, Anthony Eden and Ernest Bevin, including attending many of the wartime conferences and acting as Winston Churchill's interpreter during meetings with Charles de Gaulle. After the war, he was appointed to the UK delegation to the United Nations and then Political Counsellor in the British Embassy in Tehran. He resigned from the Foreign Office in 1950 and settled in the United States with his partner, Horst P. Horst, at their home in Oyster Bay, Long Island.

He died in North Shore Hospital on 17 June 1991.

His publications include: an autobiography, "Bound for Diplomacy" (1963); and a biography "Horst, His Work and His World" (1984).