A History of Warfare - Montgomery - Sir George Edwards to Lord Portal Presentation Copy

MONTGOMERY OF ALAMEIN, Field-Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein. A History of Warfare. London: Collins, St James’s Place, 1968.

First edition. Presentation copy from Sir George Edwards to Lord Portal.

A notable presentation copy, inscribed by Sir George Edwards to Lord Portal: “Lord Portal from George Edwards. Christmas 1968. with best wishes and gratitude for a wonderful nine years together.” The wording is especially significant. Portal was wartime Chief of the Air Staff and, after the war, became the first Chairman of the British Aircraft Corporation. Edwards, one of the defining figures of post-war British aviation, was closely associated with Vickers, the Viscount, VC10, BAC One-Eleven and Concorde. He served at BAC under Portal’s chairmanship and later became one of the principal British industrial champions of Concorde.

First edition, first impression. Quarto. Original red cloth, pictorial endpapers, in the original pictorial dust-wrapper. Profusely illustrated throughout with colour plates, maps, plans, diagrams and black-and-white illustrations. A large, ambitious and highly visual survey of warfare from the ancient world to the nuclear age, written by one of Britain’s most celebrated twentieth-century soldiers.

The inscription’s phrase, “a wonderful nine years together,” points directly to the Portal-Edwards relationship at BAC: Portal as the senior airman and chairman, Edwards as the aircraft designer, executive and industrial driving force. Their connection was therefore not casual, but one of close professional collaboration at the highest level of British aviation.

The Montgomery association is also apposite. Portal and Montgomery occupied different but closely connected levels of wartime command: Portal as Chief of the Air Staff and member of the Chiefs of Staff, Montgomery as the leading British field commander whose campaigns in North Africa, Normandy and north-west Europe depended heavily upon Allied air power. Portal and Montgomery knew one another well and were on first name terms, through wartime high command and post-war military circles. This gives the copy a layered association, bringing together Montgomery’s authorship, Portal’s wartime air command, and Edwards’s post-war leadership of British aircraft production.

Published by Collins in 1968, the book extends to 584 pages and represents Montgomery’s late summation of military history and doctrine.

Condition: a very good copy in a good to very good dust-wrapper. The red cloth binding appears sound and bright. Internally clean and well-preserved, with the presentation inscription clear in blue ink. An excellent military and aviation association copy, linking Montgomery’s history of war with Portal’s wartime air command and Edwards’s post-war leadership of British aviation.