Edward Douglas-Scott-Montagu,Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, who has died aged 88, was a gentle-mannered aristocrat who put his stately home and interest in motoring to good use by establishing the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu, in Hampshire. He also became a leader in the promotion of country houses to the public, a chairman of English Heritage and a respected Conservative peer.
And he achieved this despite a conviction and 12-month jail sentence in 1954 for what were then criminal charges of sexual offences with two RAF men, which he denied. It was the same charge – conspiring to commit unnatural acts – that had been levelled against Oscar Wilde in 1895. It took until 1967 for an age of consent for homosexual males of 21 to be established in England and Wales.
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