Letter Signed by Field Marshal Montgomery Comes to Auction

A letter signed by Field Marshal Montgomery of Alamein is to be sold in Tennants Auctioneers’ Militaria and Ethnographica Sale on 6^th March.  The handwritten letter, dated 1^st February 1959, was written in reply to an enquiry regarding Field Marshal Montgomery’s uncle, Colonel Montgomery. The letter is being sold with an estimate of £200-300 (plus buyer’s premium).

The original typed enquiry letter was written by an L. A. Ingle of Morley, West Yorkshire, who as a young man in 1910 had travelled on board a ship from Kenya to England. On the journey, the inexperienced traveller had befriended a Colonel Montgomery and his daughter, and they explored the ruins of Pompeii together during a stop in Naples. He wondered if they were related and included with the letter a faded photograph depicting Colonel Montgomery and his daughter along with Earl de Gifford and his two lion cubs.

Field Marshal Montgomery’s reply, handwritten on the reverse of the original letter, was sent from Gstaad, Switzerland. In it he confirms the identity of his uncle and his daughter, Daisy; he goes on to elaborate that Daisy married Sir Shenton Thomas, who was Governor of Singapore during the Second World War, and the pair were imprisoned following the Japanese invasion. He gives Sir Shenton and Lady Thomas’ address, and signs the letter ‘Montgomery of Alamein’.

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