Honourable Rebel: The Memoirs of Elizabeth Montagu

by Elizabeth Montagu, Ralph Montagu (Editor)

This is her extraordinary and astonishing storyElizabeth Montagu was born into privilege — but lived by her own rules. A debutante, West End actress, and later a dialogue director in film, she moved easily among the great artists of her Toscanini, Horowitz, Britten, Pears. But it was during the Second World War that her true courage emerged. Working in Switzerland with American spymaster Allen Dulles, she became part of a secret Allied effort that helped destroy the Nazi rocket site at Peenemünde. Elegant, fluent in several languages, and fearless under pressure, she operated behind enemy lines, risking her life for the Allied cause.
After the war, she resumed her life in the arts — but never fully revealed her wartime role. That story, until now, remained hidden. In this memoir, written in her later years, Elizabeth reflects not only on espionage and danger, but on music, love, loss, and resilience.
Hers is the voice of a woman who refused to be limited by convention or silenced by history. A rebel, yes — but an honourable one.
This is her story. Read it. Remember it. And let it inspire you.

582 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Elizabeth Montagu, (born Elizabeth Robinson) was an English social reformer, patron of the arts, salonist, literary critic, and writer who helped organize and lead the bluestocking society. Her parents were both from wealthy families with strong ties to the British peerage and intellectual life. She married Edward Montagu, a wealthy man with extensive holdings, to become one of the wealthiest women of her era. She devoted this wealth to fostering English and Scottish literature and to the relief of the poor.

Reviews

[Monica · Rating 3 out of 5]

I came into the world of Elizabeth Montagu almost by accident, after finding her autobiography in the gift shop of Beaulieu Estate, the stately home that is also home to England's National Motor Museum. Elizabeth's beautiful and graceful countenance alongside the title, Honourable Rebel, stood apart from all the motor inspired memorabilia in the gift shop. Turning to the back, the cover revealed a glamourous photo of a slender Elizabeth in her 20s looking like a glamourous film star of the golden age of cinema, a photo that we had spotted in a frame in the library at Beaulieu mansion, mysteriously labelled, Aunt Elizabeth. So here lay the tempting chance to find out who this aristocratic glamourous aunt was, even more tempting as she would be revealing herself in her own words and, after a whole afternoon trying to use our amateur but highly tuned powers of psychological perception in trying to unravel the family relationships at Beaulieu: lives of high-class parties, socialising, glamour, family connections, I did not want to pass the chance, especially since the book is also visually appealing, printed on shiny high quality paper and strewn with photographs from the time, a once in a lifetime opportunity to follow in those footsteps of the afternoon spent at Beaulieu, in the search for the glamorous mysterious lady.

The memoir did not disappoint, and Elizabeth was to become a larger than life-character, the intended heiress of Beaulieu until the birth of Edward, Lord Montagu, her step- baby brother almost 20 years later which caused Elizabeth's life to turn into a very different direction from the debutante future that someone of lesser intellect and aspiration would have probably gravitated towards.

Elizabeth's life was the life of the high-born, perceptive and inquisitive social butterfly with the intelligence, the ease and connections that unfurled after the early death of her mother into her search for a mother figure, a mentor, the hinted sapphic as well as the many love affairs with men (fluid and gay), the turned down highly eligible suitors, the volunteering in the British war effort, the musical and theatre stardom. Elizabeth was the prodigy who would go on to have many different lives, a European wanderer, an estranged family member of the landed aristocracy, also patron and confidante to the young heir, a woman of incredible wit, talent, social grace and breath. The autobiography finishes in the 1960s, before "the Dudley years" and it feels like a long prologue into the real Elizabeth, a pavlova cake of many layers that even when unfolded, leaves so much untold.
For whoever arrives at his autobiography, do not skip the two page postscript that shines a very perceptive light into Elizabeth's wonderfully erudite life, a rich tapestry of a formidable woman of a certain place and time.