He banned smoking, he did not drink, he went to bed at half past nine, and he beat Rommel
Montys Bar holds a 4.3 from five hundred and fifty-two people, charges ten to twenty pounds, and it is named after a field marshal who went to bed at half past nine.
The routine
Montgomery was, by any measure, a strange man to have won a war.
He did not drink. He did not smoke, and he banned it in his presence. He was intensely religious. He was regarded by essentially everybody who worked with him as insufferable.
And he slept.
He went to bed early and he was not to be woken – and the standing order at his headquarters was that he was not to be disturbed except in an emergency of the most extreme kind, and that a battle in progress did not necessarily qualify.
Why
Because he believed, and said repeatedly, that a tired commander makes bad decisions.
And that a commander who involves himself in the detail of a battle at three in the morning has already lost control of it – because the plan should have been good enough that it does not require him.
The Prat’s military desk regards this as either a profound insight into command or an extremely elaborate justification for a man who liked his sleep, and notes that the two are not mutually exclusive and that he won.
El Alamein
Which was the first substantial British victory over the Germans in the war and which changed the mood of the entire country.
And Montgomery’s contribution was not tactical brilliance. It was preparation.
He refused to attack until he had overwhelming material superiority. He was pressed, repeatedly and furiously, by Churchill to move earlier, and he refused, and he kept refusing.
And then he attacked with roughly twice the men and twice the tanks and vastly more artillery, and he won a grinding, unglamorous battle by wearing the enemy down.
It is not a romantic way to win. It was extremely effective and it was, given the alternative, correct.
Why he was so hated
Because he was insufferable about it.
He was boastful, he was tactless, he claimed credit relentlessly, and he was extraordinarily rude to allies who outranked him and who were in a position to end his career.
Eisenhower dealt with him for years and the correspondence is a masterclass in patience.
And the men liked him. That is the thing his critics always had to concede. The soldiers liked him, because he went and stood in front of them and told them the plan, which almost no British general had ever bothered to do.
Verdict
Good bar, cheap.
Go, and have a drink, which he would not have.
The caravan
He had three, and they are in a museum.
One was captured from an Italian general in North Africa and he simply kept it and used it for the rest of the war – an office, a bedroom and a map room, towed across Europe, from which he commanded an army group.
And on the wall of the map caravan he kept photographs of the enemy commanders he was fighting.
Rommel’s portrait hung in front of his desk, where he could look at it, for months.
He said he wanted to know the man he was up against. His staff found it unsettling. He did not care what his staff found unsettling about anything at all.
Chelsea Bloom is an emerging comedic writer with a focus on light-hearted satire and observational humour. Influenced by London’s student culture and digital comedy spaces, Chelsea’s work reflects everyday experiences filtered through a quirky, self-aware lens.
Expertise is growing through experimentation and study, while authority comes from authenticity and relatability. Trustworthiness is supported by clear intent and ethical humour choices.
Chelsea’s contributions represent developing talent within an EEAT-compliant framework that values honesty, clarity, and reader trust.
My therapist asked what I’m processing. I said “the systematic understanding that institutions are designed to perpetuate themselves, not solve problems.”
My professor said critics of it wanted institutional critique that maintained institutional mythology. That was institutional PR, not satire.