When words were scarce

Most of us are brought up not badly, but wrongly. Trained to the tenets of Mrs DoAsYou-WouldBeDoneBy, we are easily trampled underfoot by students of the Master DoItMyWay-OrBeDoneOver school. Consider the career of Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery as an example of the second method of upbringing. Mercilessly whipped and humiliated as a child, he grew up self-obsessed, wilful, arrogant, and it would seem without any redeeming personal qualities. Yet it was largely Monty’s egotistic drive that made him the most effective British general of the second world war, while more sympathetic commanders like Wavell and Alexander were relegated to the sidelines.

High among the surprises of this delightful memoir of Richard Carver by his son, the former BBC correspondent, is its discovery of a little oasis of affection in the barren desert of Monty’s private life. In 1927, Betty Carver, Richard’s mother, married Monty, a then undistinguished but opinionated colonel. A widow with an unconventional lifestyle epitomised by her habit of driving her two boys around in a motorbike and sidecar, Betty devoted herself to her new husband, and for almost ten years managed to love this otherwise unloveable man for the authoritarian care he bestowed on her and her children. That he in turn was capable of some more profound emotion became apparent when she died prematurely. ‘I kissed her dear face for the last time just before the coffin lid was put on’, he confessed. ‘I tried to bear up at the service and at the graveside. But I could not bear it and I am afraid I broke down utterly. I feel desperately lonely and sad.’ Although he and Betty had had a son together, the present Viscount Montgomery, much of that attachment appears to have been transferred to Richard Carver.