Beschreibung:

CHURCHILL, Winston S.] MONTGOMERY, Bernard Law ("Monty") 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein (1887-1976), Field Marshal . Collection of 16 autograph letters signed ("Montgomery of Alamein"), to Martin Gilbert, 2 January 1968--13 April 1971; 2 signed Christmas cards ("Montgomery of Alamein"). Together 20 pages, 8vo, Isington Mill, Alton, Hampshire, stationery . Fine. With 3 March 1967 TLS from Gilbert to Montgomery and carbons or photocopies of 16 additional Gilbert letters to Montgomery.
CHURCHILL, Winston S.] MONTGOMERY, Bernard Law ("Monty") 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein (1887-1976), Field Marshal . Collection of 16 autograph letters signed ("Montgomery of Alamein"), to Martin Gilbert, 2 January 1968--13 April 1971; 2 signed Christmas cards ("Montgomery of Alamein"). Together 20 pages, 8vo, Isington Mill, Alton, Hampshire, stationery . Fine. With 3 March 1967 TLS from Gilbert to Montgomery and carbons or photocopies of 16 additional Gilbert letters to Montgomery. "BY STANDING FIRM WHEN ALL SEEMED LOST WINSTON SAVED NOT ONLY BRITAIN BUT ALSO WESTERN CIVILIZATION" When the Churchill Trust turned over the task of completing the official biography to Martin Gilbert, the Oxford don turned to Montgomery of Alamein for help. Monty was delighted to assist: "During the war years I came to know him well" and in his last years "was closer to him than anybody else outside his family...I reckon Winston was a great national leader in a crisis; we became tremendous friends. He was not perfect; none of us are. But when weighed in the balance he was not found wanting." He is eager to counter-attack the critics. "You can count on me to back you 100 in your work, and to 'see off' those who now work to denigrate a great national leader in a crisis. My view has always been that by standing firm when all seemed lost Winston saved not only Britain but also Western civilization." One of those scoffers was Monty's close friend, Basil Liddell-Hart. Montgomery, although disagreeing with Liddell-Hart's interpretations, helped him with the page proofs in the weeks before Liddell-Hart's death in January 1970. Here he predicts to Gilbert that when it appears in print, "A good many people, now dead, will turn in their graves! Churchill gets a proper bashing!!" Another revisionist account, Churchill Revised: A Critical Assessment stirs his wrath. "'Critical' is an understatement!" (Gilbert thought the book "a travesty of history"). After listening to a debate between Gilbert and another revisionist, Robert Rhodes James (author of Churchill: A Study in Failure ), Monty says he thought James's comments about Churchill "disgusting. At one moment I thought you would come to blows with him." Montgomery even manages a kind word for Churchill's greatest failure, Gallipoli: "I have always considered it was a fine conception, ruined by inter-service planning and faulty command--both being dreadful." A fascinating correspondence between Churchill's great wartime lieutenant and his official biographer. "Merely talking to you," Gilbert told Montgomery, "has I think given me a clearer picture than I could possibly have got from books." (16)