Lord Montagu has died aged 88. Founder of the National Motor Museum and past Chair of English Heritage, Edward Douglas-Scott Montagu was arrested in 1954 for allegedly inciting “certain male persons to commit serious offences with male persons” following a gathering with his cousin Michael Pitt-Rivers and his friend Peter Wildeblood. Although convicted, Montagu and his co-defendants received a round of sympathetic applause from the waiting crowd, signifying that the law was out of touch with contemporary thinking; to the extent that it is believed to have been one of the drivers of the appointment of the Wolfenden Committee to investigate the state’s treatment of (male) homosexuals in 1957.
An obituary from The Guardian may be found here