Ewen Montagu - Biography

Captain The Hon. Ewen Edward Samuel Montagu, CBE, QC, DL, RNR (19 March 190119 July 1985) was a British judge, writer and Naval intelligence officer.

Montagu was born in 1901, the second son of the prominent peer Louis Montagu, 2nd Baron Swaythling. He was educated at Westminster School before becoming a machine gun instructor during World War I at a United States Naval Air Station. After the war he studied in Trinity College, Cambridge and in Harvard University before he was called to the bar in 1924.One of his more celebrated cases as a Junior Barrister was the defence of Alma Rattenbury in 1935 against a charge of murdering her elderly husband at the Villa Madeira in Bournemouth.

During World War II, Montagu served in the Naval Intelligence Division of the British Admiralty, rising to the rank of Lieutenant Commander RNVR. While Commanding Officer of NID 17M, Squadron Leader Charles Cholmondely, RAFVR and he conceived Operation Mincemeat, a major deception plan against the Germans during the war. For his role in Mincemeat, he was appointed to the Military Division of the Order of the British Empire. From 1945 to 1973 he held the position of Judge Advocate of the Fleet. He wrote The Man Who Never Was (1953), a fair, responsible account of Operation Mincemeat, which was made into a movie three years later. Montagu himself appeared in the film adaptation of The Man Who Never Was, playing a senior RAF officer who disparaged his own character (played by Clifton Webb) in a briefing.

He was president of the United Synagogue, 1954–62, and vice-president of the Anglo-Jewish Association.

Prior to the Court Act of 1971 he was Recorder (judge) in the Counties of Hampshire and Middlesex. He was also appointed Deputy Lieutenant of the County of Southampton.

His youngest brother Ivor Montagu was a film maker and Communist who was an apparent World War II spy for the Soviet GRU.

Ewen Montagu once owned 'Gleam', a Robert Clarke designed sloop built in 1938.

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