Victor Montagu

Alexander Victor Edward Paulet Montagu, 10th Earl of Sandwich (22 May 1906–25 February 1995), known as Viscount Hinchingbrooke from 1916 to 1962, as the Earl of Sandwich from 1962 to 1964 and as Victor Montagu from 1964 to 1995, was a British Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) and right-wing politician.

Montagu was the eldest son of George Montagu, 9th Earl of Sandwich, and his wife Alberta (née Sturges), and was educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1926, he joined the 5th (Huntingdonshire) Battalion of The Northamptonshire Regiment as a Lieutenant. He then joined the Conservatives and was Private Secretary to the Lord President of the Council, Stanley Baldwin, from 1932 to 1934 and Treasurer of the Junior Imperial League from 1934 to 1935.

He briefly served in France during World War II in 1940. A year later, he was elected MP for South Dorset, replacing Viscount Cranborne, who was called up to the House of Lords. A radical backbencher, Montagu setup the Tory Reform Committee in 1943, and was its founding chairman until a year later. It was at this time he wrote Essays in Tory Reform, a response to the party's moves toward liberalism.

Montagu was elected in the following five general elections, and continued as MP for South Dorset until 1962 when his father died. Montagu succeeded to his titles and could no longer sit in the Commons. Lord Sandwich did disclaim his peerages in 1964, however, under the Peerage Act, which was passed a year earlier. Although he did not sit in the House of Commons again, Montagu was President of the Anti-Common Market League from 1962–84; he also joined the Conservative Monday Club in 1964 and wrote The Conservative Dilemma in 1970.

Montagu married firstly Rosemary Peto, a goddaughter of Queen Maud of Norway and the only daughter of Major Ralph Peto, on 27 July 1934. They had seven children but were divorced in 1958. He married secondly Lady Anne Holland-Martin (née Cavendish), the youngest daughter of Victor Cavendish, 9th Duke of Devonshire, and widow of Christopher Holland-Martin MP. Their marriage was annulled in 1965.

Montagu died in 1995, aged 88 and his eldest son, John, succeeded as the 11th Earl.

Source

• Burkes's Peerage & Gentry

External links

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Victor Montagu