Lady Elizabeth Montagu

Lady Elizabeth Montagu (4 July 1917 – 10 January 2006), known as Betty Montagu, was a British novelist, nurse, and art collector. The daughter of the 9th Earl of Sandwich and American heiress Alberta Sturges, she grew up at Hinchingbrooke House in Huntingdon and was educated at North Foreland Lodge. A prominent debutante in the 1930s, she was active in the London Season before World War II. When war broke out in Europe, she volunteered as a nurse, heading the casualties department at St Thomas' Hospital in London. After the war ended, she served on the teaching staff at the Royal College of Nursing until 1950.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Lady Elizabeth was a celebrated novelist. She published three novels through Heinemann, Waiting for Camilla in 1953, The Small Corner in 1955, and This Side of the Truth in 1947. In 1958 she published an English translation of Carl Zuckmayer's 1955 drama Das kalte Licht. Lady Elizabeth also wrote contributing pieces for various British magazines, including Encounter. Her final work, a collection of short stories titled Change, and Other Stories, was published in 1966. She succumbed to alcoholism and never wrote again. Her work was praised by Sir John Betjeman, John Davenport and Graham Greene, and she received glowing reviews in The Times Literary Supplement and the New Statesman.

Lady Elizabeth was also an amateur artist who painted country scenes and drew portraits of her friends. She was an avid art collector and, along with maintaining a large art collection she inherited from her father, she collected works by Graham Sutherland, Sir Sidney Nolan, Frank Auerbach and Michael Andrews.