Insufferable martinet or inspirational hero? Field Marshal Montgomery was both
To begin at the beginning: the title. ‘Unbeatable, Unbearable’ is supposedly Winston Churchill’s opinion of Bernard Montgomery – that in defeat he was the first, and in victory the second. Gary Mead acknowledges that it is merely ‘attributed’ to Churchill. According to the late Richard Langworth, the unrivalled curator of Churchillian wit and wisdom, it and the rather more grandiloquent ‘In defeat, indomitable; in victory, insufferable’ are widely bruited about but are not in the Churchill canon. Does it matter? We can be confident that the other major Allied figures of the second world war who dealt with Monty – Alanbrooke, Eisenhower and Ismay – would not have disagreed too much.
