Best Defense

Thomas E. Ricks' daily take on national security.

Things I Didn’t Know: Montgomery Was the Best Man at Philby’s wedding

Things I didn’t know: When St. John Philby got married in India in 1910, his best man was Bernard Law Montgomery.

Harry_St._John_Bridger_Philby
Harry_St._John_Bridger_Philby

Things I didn’t know: When St. John Philby got married in India in 1910, his best man was Bernard Law Montgomery.

Things I didn’t know: When St. John Philby got married in India in 1910, his best man was Bernard Law Montgomery.

The Philby marriage of course produced H.A.R. “Kim” Philby, the greatest traitor of the 20th century.

From the same book, Anthony Cave Brown’s biography of Sir Stewart Menzies, I learned the old World War II headquarters for British intelligence stood on or near the land where there was a house in which Milton began writing “Paradise Lost.”

Photo credit: Constable and Company/Wikimedia Commons

Thomas E. Ricks covered the U.S. military from 1991 to 2008 for the Wall Street Journal and then the Washington Post. He can be reached at ricksblogcomment@gmail.com. Twitter: @tomricks1

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