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John Walter Edward Montagu-Scott | |||||||||||
| Edward John Barrington Douglas-Scott-Montagu [CFT #13878] Born: 1926-Oct-20 Died: 2015-Aug-31 |
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| b Thurloe Square, South Kensington, London d Beaulieu Palace House, Hampshire Only son of the 2nd Lord Montagu, KCIE, CSI, VC, DL, JP, of Beaulieu, Hampshire, he inherited the barony in 1929 at the age of 2 when his father died of pneumonia. After schooling he served as a lieutenant in the Grenadier Guards including service in Palestine before the end of the British Mandate (1945-1948). On coming of age he took his seat in the House of Lords and swiftly made his maiden speech on the subject of Palestine. He had read Modern History at Oxford but during his second year an altercation between the Bullingdon Club of which he was a member, and the Oxford University Dramatic Society led to his room being wrecked so he felt obliged to leave. Lord Montagu gained an interest in motoring from his father ? who had commissioned the original "Spirit of Ecstasy" mascot for his Rolls-Royce ? and with his family collection of historic cars this led him to open the National Motor Museum in the grounds of his stately home, Beaulieu Palace House, Beaulieu, Hampshire, in 1952. From 1956 to 1961 he held the influential Beaulieu Jazz Festival in the grounds of Palace House; this was a leading contribution to the development of festival culture in Britain, as it attracted thousands of young people who, from 1958 on, would camp out and listen and dance to live music. The 1960 festival saw an altercation between modern and trad jazz fans that became known as the Battle of Beaulieu. Montagu founded The Veteran And Vintage Magazine in 1956 and continued to develop the museum, making a name for himself in tourism. He was chairman of the Historic Houses Association from 1973 to 1978, President of the Institute of Traffic Administration from 1973 to 1974 and chairman of English Heritage from 1984 to 1992. Whilst there he appointed Jennifer Page (later of the Millennium Dome) as Chief Executive in 1989. In the 1999 reform of the House of Lords, Montagu was one of 92 hereditary peers who remained in Parliament. In 2007, he was Vice-Commodore of the House of Lords Yacht Club. Montagu knew from an early stage of life that he was bisexual, and while attending Oxford was relieved to find others with similar feelings. In a 2000 interview he stated, "My attraction to both sexes neither changed nor diminished at university and it was comforting to find that I was not the only person faced with such a predicament. I agonised less than my contemporaries, for I was reconciled to my bisexuality, but I was still nervous about being exposed." On two occasions Montagu was charged and committed for trial at Winchester Assizes, firstly in 1953 for having underage sex with a 14-year-old boy scout at his beach hut on the Solent, a charge he always denied. The American Institute of Public Relations had just voted him the most promising young PR man when he was arrested. Although he enjoyed the support of his close family and a wide variety of friends, for a year or so he became "the subject of endless blue jokes and innumerable bawdy songs". Unlike the other defendants in the trial, Montagu continued to protest his innocence. The trial caused a backlash of opinion among some politicians and church leaders that led to the setting up of the Wolfenden Committee, which in its 1957 report recommended the decriminalisation of homosexual activity in private between two adults. Ten years later, Parliament finally carried out the recommendation, a huge turning point in gay history in Britain, where anal sex, a form of "buggery", had been a criminal offence ever since the Buggery Act 1533. Edward Montagu married secondly in 1974, Fiona Margaret Herbert, born about 1943 in Southern Rhodesia, a film production assistant and had further issue, a son, the Hon. Jonathan Deane Douglas-Scott-Montagu who was born in 1975. |
1: 1961 Ralph Douglas-Scott-Montaguc W 2: 1964 Mary Douglas-Scott-Montaguc H/C 3: 1975 Jonathan Deane Douglas-Scott-Montagu | ||||||||||
| 3 Children | |||||||||||
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