Wheels Within Wheels

Any conventional account of the life Edward Montagu, 3rd Baron Montagu of Beaulieu, would tell of his passion for motorcars, his setting up of the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu in Hampshire, his accession to the Montagu barony at the age of three (his father had been a pioneer motorist and Conservative MP), his attendance at the House of Lords for more than fifty years), and his Chairmanship of English Heritage. But his Whos Who entry makes no mention of an event in his life in the mid-1950s that was instrumental in a reform of the law on homosexuality. In WHEELS UPON WHEELS Montagu reveals for the first time what happened in 1952 when he was arrested along with the journalist Peter Wildeblood (died in 1999) on charges that lead to his trial and ultimate imprisonment. Montagu discusses for the very first time with frankness - and humour - his own sexuality, how he first realised his own sexual preferences were ambidextrous and how he used his position as a Peer to campaign for a royal commission eventually set up by Harold Macmillan under Lord Wolfenden - that led to the law being changed. These memoirs benefit from the memories and diaries kept by his mother, who only died, aged 101, in 1986. He has also unearthed a trunk of papers relating to his trial, which he had not looked at for more than 40 years. WHEELS UPON WHEELS will prove to be the most sensational memoirs of their year.