Valentine George Lawford was born in Chorleywood, Hertfordshire on 27 February 1911, the son of Captain Vincent Adrian Lawford and Agnes Jane (née Mapplebeck). He was educated at Repton School and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. 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 overseas posting was as Third Secretary of the British Embassy in Paris, 1937-9. 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 newly established United Nations in New York, 1946-9, and then political counsellor in the British Embassy in Tehran [Iran], 1949-50. 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, and pursued a career as a writer and painter.

He died in North Shore Hospital on 17 June 1991.

His publications include his memoir, 'Bound for Diplomacy' (1963) and his biography of Horst, 'Horst: His Work and His World' (1984).