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Lord Montague of Beaulieu
Late Grenadier Guards
by Major P A J Wright OBE
formerly Grenadier Guards
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 Edward Montague, 3rd Baron, who died on 31st August 2015 at the age of 88, was born on 26th October 1926. He inherited the title and the Beaulieu Estate at the age of two on the death of his father, the second Lord Montague, a motoring pioneer. His education at St Peter’s Court, Broadstairs was interrupted by the Second World War when he was evacuated first to Devon, and then Canada, where he attended Ridley College, near Niagara Falls. Aged 16 he returned to Britain and went to Eton. His housemaster wrote that he had been a ‘model combination of good sense and determination’ but could be ‘ruthless and unfeeling in a clash of interests’.
Called up for military service, Lord Montague was commissioned into the Grenadier Guards in September 1945, and joined 3rd Battalion in Palestine where the British were mandated to keep the peace between the Jews and Arabs, while preventing bloodshed and destruction. He was promoted to Motor Transport Officer and involved in intensive internal security operations.
On leaving the Army as a Lieutenant in 1947, he went to New College, Oxford, where he read Modern History. In November 1947, he took his seat in the House of Lords and in January 1948 made his maiden speech on Palestine. He pointed out that in the past year ‘our soldiers have always behaved with the most remarkable restraint in the face of every provocation.’ One minute the Guardsmen were being attacked with axes and other steel weapons, the next they were ‘good humouredly and gently assisting the Jews to disembark, carrying their baggage off the ships’.
He left Oxford of his own accord in 1948 and went into advertising. On his 25th birthday in 1951, he took over the running of the Beaulieu Estate. He opened the house to the paying public and started a small motor museum. The infamous Montague trials in 1953 and 1954 resulted in him being charged with homosexual acts, which were then illegal. He pleaded not guilty, but was given a twelve-month sentence. In prison he worked in the tailors shop supervised by two prison officers, who were both former Grenadier Guards NCOs. On his release, his brother officers, led by Robin Leigh-Pemberton, later Lord Kingsdown, gave a lunch for him in Soho. He immediately went about rebuilding his life and developing the estate. He became a successful author writing 21 books on motoring and heritage topics.
He returned to the Lords in 1958 and was a regular participant in political life. When the 1999 reforms were implemented he was one of the Conservative hereditary peers elected to remain. By the mid-Sixties, Beaulieu was attracting over half a million visitors a year and in 1974, the National Motor Museum was awarded the prestigious National Heritage Museum of the Year. Having played a major role in the Historic Houses Association he was appointed first chairman of English Heritage in 1983. His candid autobiography, Wheels within Wheels, was published in 2002.
He wrote: ‘Of all the institutions with which I have been connected, the Guards have always been the most conspicuously loyal’. He was a Vice President of the Wessex Branch of the Grenadier Guards Association, and provided the pre-lunch drinks at Beaulieu on the Branch’s 50th Anniversary. He was a member of the 1st Guards Club and a gentle mannered Grenadier who will be much missed.
In 1959, he married Belinda Crossley with whom he had a son, Ralph, and a daughter, Mary. The marriage was dissolved in 1974, after which he married Fiona Herbert with whom he had a second son, Jonathan, in 1975. He is survived by Fiona and his children. His elder son, Ralph succeeds to the barony.
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