Valentine Nicholas Lawford was born in 1911, the son of Captain Vincent Adrian Lawford RN and Jane Agnes (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 Private Secretary to the Foreign Secretary, 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 alternate UK Delegate to the United Nations Security Council 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 1991.

His publications include: "Bound for Diplomacy" (1963); and "Horst" (1984).