Watching Monty

Johnny Henderson spent four years during the Second World War as aide-de-camp to one of Britain’s most famous soldiers of the twentieth century, General Bernard Montgomery – or ‘Monty’, as he was popularly known. Shortly before he died in 2003, Henderson wrote about his time with Monty at Tac HQ. In Watching Monty, his account takes the form of a series of insightful anecdotes and brief pen sketches that give a fascinating and often humorous window on life with Monty and those with whom he worked, or came into contact, during the war years. These people range from King George VI, Winston Churchill and Sir Alan Brooke to Eisenhower and the German surrender delegation on Lüneburg Heath.

Drawing on his own private photograph albums and the photographic collections of the Imperial War Museum, Johnny Henderson relates his time as Monty’s ADC, from the Western Desert to Berlin, in the form of a photographic anecdotal scrap book. His pithy observations of life at Tac HQ make a unique contribution to our understanding of what made Monty tick, and shows us a less well-known but lighter side of the great man.