Our Monthly Meeting on Wednesday 26 March 2025 had guest speaker Rachel Montagu, whose grandfather was famous in connection with the “Man Who Never Was”. Many of our members have seen the film of that title or read the book by Ewen Montagu, but this meeting was an opportunity to learn about the life of the man who created the man who never was.

Rachel described her grandfather’s early life and career in some detail. He had grown up as one of four children in the Montagu family and studied at Westminster School in the centre of London. During World War I, whilst still at school, he had received a dispensation from the school to wear his CCF (Combined Cadet Force) uniform whilst travelling to and from school, as there were many who were critical of young men that did not enlist in the forces. After the war, he had moved on to Trinity College Cambridge and graduated in 1920. A whirlwind romance led to an engagement that lasted just two days, which in turn led to a marriage that lasted more than 50 years! He was called to the bar in 1924.

He combined a successful career as a KC with his passionate interest in sailing, and in 1938 joined the Royal Navy Reserve. With the outbreak of war in 1939, he was called up and posted to Hull. There he provided useful intelligence to the Admiralty on what was happening in and around the North Sea. and that led to him being ‘spotted’ for intelligence work as the war developed.

The Allied Forces were planning an invasion of Southern Europe for 1943 but were concerned that the landing in Sicily would fail unless the German and Italian forces were somehow incapacitated. An Admiralty Committee – known as XX Committee (the twentieth committee) – proposed a plan that would make the Italian and German forces abandon Sicily in order to defend an invasion of Southern Greece from Crete. The Plan known as Operation Mincemeat involved placing important military plans on a dead body that would be washed up in Spain where there were active Nazi agents. Other documents would accompany the corpse lending credibility to the story.

Operation Mincemeat was a success, and after World War II, Ewen Montagu returned to the law and held several positions as a judge. In 1953, he wrote “The Man Who Never Was” and became a successful author. Much of his work during World War II had to remain secret, especially his involvement with the operations at Bletchley Park, That activity started to emerge in the late 1970s, and his book Beyond Top Secret U was published in 1979 linking the Code Breakers to Operation Mincemeat.

This was a fascinating insight into the life of Rachel’s grandfather, a man who had saved many thousands of allied forces’ lives with his scheme dreamed up by the members of the XX Committee. The books “The Man Who Never Was” and “Beyond Top Secret U” are widely available for purchase on the internet!