If an ex-military Oxford aristocrat who tooled around the English countryside in vintage automobiles, fur coats, and driving goggles sounds like a character in an Evelyn Waugh novel, you wouldn't be wrong, but we assure you that he was real. The man described is Lord Montagu, 3rd Baron Montagu of Beaulieu, who died yesterday after a short illness at age 88.
Born Edward Douglas-Scott-Montagu, the young baron started his life in public service by serving a stint in Palestine as a member of the Grenadier Guards before returning to England to take up the family mantle.
Few members of the landed English gentry have swung open the towering doors of their storied estates quite so generously as Lord Montagu, who in 1952 opened the National Motor Museum in the opulent Palace House, owned by his family since 1538. It wasn't long before attendance at the museum was outnumbered only by attendance at the Tower of London.
From 1956 to 1961, Lord Montagu opened his home to the annual Beaulieu Jazz Festival, and as with any society party worth its salt, the 1960 iteration of the festival ended with a brawl between modern and traditional jazz devotees colloquially referred to as the Battle of Beaulieu.
After taking up his seat in the House of Lords, Lord Montagu continued to drive tourism and preservation efforts to the English countryside for decades to come while he served as the chairman of such organizations as the Historic Houses Association and the English Heritage Trust.
But it wasn't this half of Lord Montagu's double life that put him on the world map—it was his storied youth as a bohemian bisexual. In 1954, Lord Montagu was arrested after an alleged all-male orgy in a beach hut on the Palace House's grounds, and was soon convicted of "conspiracy to incite certain male persons to commit serious offences [sic] with male persons," the first time this charge was levied since the Oscar Wilde trials in1895.
Lord Montagu was sentenced to a year in prison, but the outraged and increasingly progressive public rallied around the beloved pillar of British tabloid culture who hobnobbed with everyone from Princess Margaret to Liberace. The conviction was a fundamental step in the reconsideration of homosexuality as a criminal offense—in 1967, it was decriminalized in England and Wales.
After Lord Montagu weathered the storm in prison, he resumed his work as the white knight of historic estates across the English countryside, continued to collect dazzling vintage cars for the National Motor Museum, and pled his innocence until the end of his days.
Lord Montagu is survived by his wife, three children, and two grandchildren. The barony will pass to his eldest son, Ralph, as will custodianship of the Palace House.
We're crossing our fingers for a Downton Abbey-esque miniseries about Lord Montagu's life. It sounds like fur coats and period-authentic automobiles are already covered.
Adrienne Westenfeld is the Books and Fiction Editor at Esquire, where she oversees books coverage, edits fiction, and curates the Esquire Book Club.
