David Bernard Montgomery, 2nd Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, CMG, CBE (18 August 1928 – 8 January 2020) was a British politician and businessman. He was the son of Bernard Montgomery.
Montgomery was the only child of Field Marshal The 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, a senior military commander in the Second World War, and his wife Elizabeth Carver, née Hobart.[2][3] He had two older half brothers from his mother's previous marriage, John and Dick. Montgomery's mother died in 1937 while on holiday in Burnham-on-Sea after suffering from an infected insect bite which caused septicaemia following amputation of her leg.[4]
David attended Winchester College from May 1942 onwards, and his father, posted abroad from the middle of the year, arranged for his time in school holidays to be divided between his prep school headmaster and family friends, Major Thomas Reynolds and Mrs. Phyllis Reynolds, and Jocelyn, wife of David's half-brother John Carver, as well as strict instructions that "on no account" was the boy to visit his aged paternal grandmother, whom the then Sir Bernard Law Montgomery detested, in Inishowen, County Donegal, in Ulster.[5] Montgomery gained an engineering degree at Trinity College, Cambridge.[2]
Montgomery entered business, working for Shell, Yardley and several other companies, and he built close links with Latin America. He served as a patron and chairman of various Anglo-Latin American organisations, including the Anglo-Argentine Society, Canning House and the Hispanic and Luso Brazilian Council.[3]
He succeeded to the viscountcy following his father's death in 1976[2] and originally sat as a Conservative in the House of Lords until 1999, when he and most other hereditary peers were removed from the House under the House of Lords Act 1999. He was returned to the Lords as a crossbencher in an election of hereditary cross-bench peers in 2005, following the death of Baroness Strange.
Montgomery was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1975 and a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) in 2000. He also received decorations from Germany, Belgium, Spain, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Venezuela and Colombia. He co-wrote The Lonely Leader: Monty 1944–45 with Alistair Horne about his father in 1994, which documented his own early life as well as his father's.[3]
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In 1953, The Hon. David Montgomery, as he was then, married Mary Connell. They divorced in 1967 after having a son and a daughter:[6]
He then married Tessa Browning, daughter of Daphne du Maurier and Lieutenant-General Sir Frederick Browning, a close colleague of his father.[2]Lord Montgomery of Alamein became Patron of Freedom Flame UK, in May 2014, in recognition of the lighting of a Torch of Unity at the D Day stone, Southsea, by his father, Field Marshal The 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, on 13 September 1948.[7]
He died on 8 January 2020 at the age of 91.[8]
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