Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci - My Entire Life Exists Because Strangers Chose Courage - Tom Carver

Episode Date: February 5, 2026

Tom Carver was a long-time foreign correspondent with the BBC. He was latterly the BBC's Washington Correspondent and continues to live in Washington working as a writer and consultant. He is the step-grandson of Field Marshal Montgomery. This book would make a great TV series. Get your copy of Where The Hell Have You Been?: Monty, Italy and One Man's Incredible Escape Anthony Scaramucci is the founder and managing partner of SkyBridge, a global alternative investment firm, and founder and chairman of SALT, a global thought leadership forum and venture studio. He is the host of the podcast Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci. A graduate of Tufts University and Harvard Law School, he lives in Manhasset, Long Island. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. One time during this two months, the Germans realized that there was two officers hiding, and they went to the de Grigior family, and they put the grandmother, Maria, against the wall, and said, we're going to shoot you unless you tell us. And she didn't tell them. I mean, it's just incredible, you know, that someone would do that for two total strangers that they had no connection with and would share their last bit of food with them.

It's just amazing, you know. Welcome to Open Book. I am your host, Anthony Scaramucci. Joining us now is Tom Carver. He's the author of Where the Hell Have You Been, Monty, Italy, and One Man's Incredible Escape. It's being republished right now in the UK, and it'll be out again in a new edition in the United States in May. Tom, welcome to the show. And, of course, some of you may know Tom's wife, Caddy Kay, who, you know, you know.

I mean, she browbeats me. Tom and I could probably talk about that as well, but my co-hosts on the... Deirdrean and I, I can talk about that. Yes, exactly. The rest of politics, US. But anyway, this is an extraordinary story, Tom. But before we get into this story, I want to talk a little bit about your background, if okay, and your relationship with General or Marshall Bernard Montgomery.

Sure, yeah. Well, let me say, quite funny, Anthony, sitting. in the chair that Caddy normally sits in to chat to you every week. And I'm here instead of her. But she really loves doing a podcast week. And she left you good, hey, Carver, she left you good lighting, by the way. You're very well lit. So she must still want.

She set my microphone up. Yeah, exactly. She must still like you because the lighting is good. Yeah, that's true. She would have made you too bright otherwise, but you're looking good. Yeah. Yeah. We had a kind of rough night because our daughter had some people around and they were

there until two in the morning, but we survived and we're here. Yeah, well, that's the perils of peril. Anyway, but she does love doing it with you and she often comes out of the podcast, talking about it and saying how exciting it is to be with you and to do the podcast every week, so it's great. She's enhanced my brand, Carver, that British accent that you guys have, you know, she's taking me up a notch, Carver. I think it's a mutual.

But let's get the conversation on you or back. which I think is just a fascinating thing and how you became a BBC foreign correspondent. And then obviously, I mean, there's a personal side to this story that gravitated you to write this book. Let's start there. Yeah. Yeah. So I, as you say, I was a BBC foreign correspondent for many years, a war reporter actually for eight years of doing wars. I was based in Africa.

So I covered the Rwandan genocide and covered Somalia, black crime. caught down, Srebrenica in Bosnia, all those sort of lovely things that now seem a long time ago, but were hugely consequential at the time. And all the time I was doing this, and in the field, I was kind of conscious of my father, having had also an extraordinary life as a officer, and the fact that his stepfather was Field Marshal Montgomery. And Monty died when I was about 15, I think. So I have quite clear memories of him.

I remember being taken to see him by my parents and being kind of completely silenced by him. He was a intimidating character. And whenever we went over there, it seemed like there was like 15 other generals with all their badges and medals and things. And I remember one particularly kind of gruesome Sunday afternoon, and they were having tea, and Monty told me to pass the chocolates round, and I dropped them because I was so nervous. And I was kind of scrabbling around, amongst the feet of all these generals, trying to pick up these chocolates. And he just yelled him, he just, get out and go into the garden. And so I went into the garden.

and in the garden of his house down in the south of England where he'd retired was his caravan that he had used all through his North Africa campaign right up through Italy all the way through D-Day to Berlin. He had travelled in his caravan and I went on being an inquisitive 15-year-old and I went into the caravan. I didn't really know much about Monti's significance and on the wall of the caravan was this map of the Mediterranean. And there were these kind of chinographs.

I don't know if you know what I think. You know, there's kind of things you used to write on a map. Anyway, I started kind of just doodling on the map, which was a bit mischievous, but I was bored. And cut forward, I don't know, 40 years later, and that caravan is in the Imperial War Museum. And there was a formal opening of the caravan, which had been donated. to the Imperial War Museum. And my dad and I were invited, and we were lining up.

And there was a lot of other dignitaries ahead, wanting to see the caravan or what it was like. And by then I was a foreign correspondent, and I remember this man, I think he was an American general, actually, coming out of the caravan and looking kind of mystified and saying to his wife, wow, I don't know, Monty ever planned a sea invasion of North Africa.

That had been my China. line that I'd kind of, you know, mischively lined across the map from the Mediterranean into North Africa. Anyway, I didn't tell my dad. I didn't confess to him that that was my line. But it was, yeah, he was always this presence in my life. But your father is a big part of this story as well, though. So tell us a little bit about your dad.

So my dad was born two months before the start of the first old war, which is kind of incredible to think, right? I mean, in May, 1914. His father was very young. His father had just graduated from Cambridge and was sent straight into the trenches and he was killed at Gallipoli, my grandfather. And my father was 18 months old, so never knew his father. His mother then, who was a very babacious character, by all accounts, I never met her, my grandmother, but she was very, you know, enjoyed lots of company. And so, She was a widow and she, in the 1930s, met this colonel in the ski resort called Bernard Montgomery. And they fell in love. And he was an unknown at that time.

He was completely unknown. Very, you could see what kind of a character he was. He was, you know, full of energy, slightly ADD, quite sharp, you know, slightly spectrum, probably. would be quite sharp with people, but, but, you know, clearly brilliant. And they were an unlikely couple and they fell in love. And my dad was about 12 then, I guess. No, I guess he was a bit more. But anyway, my grandmother then was on a beach just before the beginning of the Second World War in England.

And she got a tick a bite from an insect. And she died of blood poisoning. It was before antibiotics, you know, it was before she didn't get proper treatment. And Monty was absolutely devastated. And if you look at the photos of him at that time, he just looks like a shell of a man. I mean, it was the only person, I think, in the whole world that he ever loved was my grandmother. And when she went, he just threw himself into his work. And, you know, it's one of those interesting.

counter-narrative things. You know, if Betty had lived, would he have become the general that he did, you know, subsequently because he became, you know, obsessive about fighting the Germans. So, yeah, so that's, he kind of was not liked by Churchill because he was so argumentative and quite difficult to handle. And when the allies, when Rommel was coming along

the North African coast in 1940, and it looked really bad for the Allies. Monty ended up as the general there in charge, and it wasn't Churchill's choice. The previous general had been killed in an aircraft crash, and Churchill really had run out of generals, basically. And so he very reluctantly appointed Monty to this. And it was a real hinge moment because Romel was on the verge of taking Cairo.

Had he taken Cairo, you would have had access to all the oil, oil fields in the Middle East. And Monty just realized this was his moment. And he made it, he said, I'm going to make this stand at this place called El Alamein in the desert. And he prepared and he prepared and he prepared for it. And then he launched his counter attack. And it broke through Rommel's lines. And my dad was, Monty had asked my dad to be his ADC, his aide-de-court. And so my dad arrived in the desert 24, again just down from Cambridge. And Monty, during this advance, it was all chaotic, as you can imagine, you know, it was like hundreds of thousands of troops, it was dark, it was January, it was raining unusually in the

desert. And Monty told my dad to get in his staff car and drive forward towards the German. to find a new place to put the headquarters. My dad drove in the night, and he just went too far. There were no lights, and he hit the German lines, and they arrested them. And the incredible thing, Anthony,

is that they didn't realize they had Montes' stepson because he had a different name, and they didn't know about Monti's family, I guess. Had they known that, they would have obviously used them as a hostage, they would have sent him to cold its or to the concentration camps. Sure. But because he was, they just thought he was just another British officer,

they gave him over to the Italians and he was put in a camp in Italy. But he escaped. I mean, this is the great part. Yeah. So then his life story has tied to you and your whole family because if he doesn't make it out of there, it's obviously a different, this is different destiny for all of us, right? So he escapes and this is a brilliant, part of the story. It's a 500-mile journey through German occupied territory. He's in the winter.

He doesn't have a GPS, right? I don't think he has an iPhone on him in the escape, right? So tell us about this harrowing little food, risk of betrayal, risk of being captured, talk us through some of the moments he faced. How do you think he navigated those? Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, he obviously had nothing and prepared him for it. I should just just, just, tell you how he got to escape because when the Italians surrendered in 1943, you know, the Italian army just put down their weapons, right? And the head of the camp where he was in in northern Germany by Parma, it's called Fontenolato, happened to be a very decent Italian colonel. And he, and the Germans were pouring into Italy over the Alps to try to stem the, you know, progress of the

allies coming up through Sicily and so forth. And he said, he got all the camp together and he said, in two hours the Germans are going to be here. I'm going to cut the wire and you can escape. And he knew that that meant death for him because the Germans would be furious, obviously. But he cut the wire and they, 1,200 men ran out. And they decided, rather amazingly, that if they just ran, the Germans would just drive around and pick them up. It would be easy for them. So they decided to hide in a massive drainage ditch almost right next to the camp because they just thought the Germans would never look there.

And for 24 hours, they could hear the Germans driving round and around, unable to kind of figure out where all these men had disappeared to. And then eventually the Germans carried on south and they stood up. and started going their different ways. And some went to the Alps, some went to the coast. And my dad, as you say, decided to walk south down the Apennines, hoping, I guess, eventually to meet up with his stepfather, Monty, who was coming up.

And you talk about navigation. I brought with you something, which I think you might find interesting. This is the compass that he used on his navigation. So no GPS, as you say, there it is. It's a little thing made out of a safety pin. Right. And a top of some tin top

and put together by sticking plaster. And it still works, still points north. And he used that for 500 miles, kept it in this little box. It gets a lot of help along the way, though. I mean, it's an interesting story about the Italian civilian community. right, they come to help him. Tell us a little bit about that because obviously they're helping him

under risk of execution. They're helping him under fear of imprisonment, concentration camps, etc. But they don't care. They make that courageous sacrifice for him. Tell us about that. Yeah. I mean, they really are the hero of the story. And I hope, you know, they come across as the hero of my book. There was a series of families that looked after him. I mean, he was looked after by monks in monasteries. He was looked after by quite wealthy families, very poor families along the way. But there was one family in particular that would just, you know, saved his life because he gets, in December, 1943, he gets to the Sangro River, which is this river kind of east of Rome. And this is the river that the Germans have decided to put what it was known as the Gustav Line

a massive fortification and they are going to stop the allies coming up and so there are hundreds of thousands of Germans there that he knows that on the other side of the river is Monty and so if he can just cross this river he will be safe and he is hiding in this bush one morning trying to kind of figure out

what he's going to do and these two kids come down this track and they trip over my father's feet because my father was quite tall. He couldn't get his feet into the bush. So they'd trip over his feet and they have a gun with them. And they're about, they think initially that he's a German. And so they're about to shoot him.

And he says, no, no, no, no, no. We're English officer. He was with a one on a guy. And it turns out that these two guys, Alfonso and Antonio DiGregorio, were running down from their farmhouse in the hills because the Germans had just taken their family pig. And that, you can imagine how absolutely critical that pig was to that family's survival. No kidding.

I mean, you know, this was a family without hardly any food. And these two boys were determined to take on this German patrol and get the pig back. And my father realized that this was absolute madness and that they would all die if they tried to do that. And so he said, please don't do that. please don't do that and persuaded them and they lay in the bushes and they watched the patrol go by with the pig and they took my father up to the house and my fat that family then looked after my father for nearly two months and they would put him in a cave there was this cave that he hid in with jim his other companion uh during the day and then every night alfonso or one

of the boys would come down and tell them the coast was clear and they'd bring them up to the farmhouse and they would feed them. They would share, you know, the tiny amount of food that they had with them. It's an incredible one day, it's an incredible story. And just, you know, so just to give you an example of how incredibly brave they were, one time during this two months, the Germans realized that there was two soldiers two officers hiding and they went to the de gorgio family and they put the grandmother Maria

against the wall and said we're going to shoot you unless you tell us and she didn't tell them and it's just incredible you know that someone would do that for two total strangers that they had no connection with and would share

their last bit of food with them it's just amazing you know well listen I I want to take it back to Monty for a second because you discover a lot about Monty's personality in writing

the book he as you point out he's a formidable commander he's sort of an imperious guy but he's also a stepfather in love with his stepson and he's worried about him and he has no idea whether he's alive or dead. So tell us about uncovering that story and how it potentially

changed your understanding of Field Marshal Montgomery. Yeah. So, as I said, you know, at the beginning, my childhood memories of him was as a very severe man who really had lost any person he ever loved. And so, you know, and had gone through all this war. He'd gone through the first old war and then through the second war. And so he was kind of, you know, suffering PTSD, but also had a very kind of inflated ego and kind of sense of himself. And yeah, he wasn't an easy man. And never kind of showed much affection to any of us.

But in writing this book, what I discovered was that when I applied to the War Museum for some records, I came across a whole series of letters that my, that Monty had written to the international Red Cross asking about my father and where was he and which prisoner war camp was he in and was he getting rations and make sure that he is you know tracked and traced and not you know doesn't disappear into the gulag and you know and you think how busy monte was at that time of you know fighting on in alamein and then fighting up through sicily and up through italy and then And basically all during that year, he was trying to find my dad and making sure that my dad wasn't lost. And I think that shows an incredible tenderness that I don't think my father ever knew.

My father's now died, obviously. And he was not aware of that because the book came out after my father had passed. But I do want to just say one thing about this. Can I just go back a second to this? image of my dad living in this cave, because not only did the de Gregorios, you know, look after him, they enlisted the whole community. And there was a system.

So when I was researching the book, Caddy and I went back to Italy with our kids, and we found the cave and we found the family. And we sat with them and we talked about it and we discovered that there was a whole system of looking after Jim and my dad. And, for example, there was a woman in the neighboring village of Rocca Skelenia, which is where the German headquarters were, who every time the Germans went out on patrol from that village,

she would lower a sheet out of the windows if she was airing it. and someone else in the village next to the de Gregorios, which was called Jessipollinia, would see that and would then run up and tell the de Gregorios to get my dad and Jim back into the cave. And so that's kind of one side of it. The reason that the Germans knew that they were there is because there was another woman who was sleeping with the German common band

and, you know, revealed, the moments of high ecstasy, there was a couple of British soldiers. And that's why they went up to the digger of gorillas and threatened to kill the grandmother. So, you know, you kind of uncover these layers in which these families are kind of either helping or hindering this effort. It was kind of amazing. And we, you know, I don't know if you want to know about this, but I mean, we stayed in touch with this family and I'm still in touch with them.

Yeah, that was my follow-up question. And have your family still been able to keep that connection, you know, 80 years long, 80 years past? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Because I just think, I mean, like you say, without them, my dad wouldn't be alive. I wouldn't be alive. I mean, I owe everything to them. And so, yes, I mean, the cousin of this family came to stay with us for Easter in Washington. Antonio, who is another cousin who we're very particularly close to who lives in Geneva, we go and see.

And then also, I'm now on the board of this organization for the Montesan-Martino Trust, which is a group of all descendants of POWs in Italy, just like me. Who owe their lives to Italian families. And we, the sole purpose of the trust is to raise money for educational fellowships, to bring the children of these families over to give them a chance to learn English in Britain. And it's incredibly moving. We just had our lunch in London the other day and just the stories that others have, you know, quite similar. And not just Brits, but also a lot of Americans too. Let's go to the cultural differences between the Italians and the Brits for a second, okay?

because he's now returning Allied headquarters, and he's seeing Monty, and this is the title of your book, and Monty very dryly says to him, where the hell have you been? I'm just letting you know, Italians don't do that, Tom. They'd be hugging each other. The accordion would have been broken out. The wine would be popping.

But the Brits are like, you know, dryly. I mean, he's worried sick about him, you know, and he's like, where the hell have you been? Right. So tell us about that moment. because you capture this emotional moment between the two of them brilliantly in the book. Yeah. I mean, absolutely, as you say, I mean, that is the difference of nationalities.

Can you imagine the Italians saying that? I mean, it's just impossible. No, the Italians would have had like a full-on wedding. You know what I mean? They would have been bringing food. It would have killed seven pigs for that. Right, right. I mean, I guess, you know, Monty was a little busy, so he didn't have time for a full-on wedding.

but even so, he could have given him a hug. I mean, there's a fantastic photo in the book of the two of them standing side by side. And Monty, I mean, my dad, you know, who had arrived in the camp in Monty's HQ, you know, completely disheveled and malnourished and, you know, had a beard and everything. He'd been sent off to get a quick shave

before meeting Monty. And he's standing there looking a bit shell-shocked and there's Monty. And, you know, if you read into it, you can see that Monty's smile. It's pretty warm. But you would never guess, I would never have guessed until I found these letters that he was so worried about my dad. Yeah.

And he said that. Yeah. And it was just, that was Montes style. You know, where the hell have he been? You know, that was his way of saying, I'm glad to see you. Reflecting back on your dad for a moment, how do you think this traumatizing period of his life affected him? So I have an uncle who I'm named after who was on Normandy Beach. He survived Normandy Beach.

He was wounded in a small village on the way to Paris with the Allied troops, the American Army, was in a field hospital for two months. After his convalescence, they told him he could return home. He did not. He went to go fight in the Ardennes in the Battle of the Bulge and ended up in Potsdam with Harry Truman. But forever changed, Tom. He suffered from what we now call PTSD. and he never really recovered from his wartime experience and the senseless deaths of his friends that he watched and witnessed in the horrors and so forth. Was your dad impacted? I'm sure. Obviously

he was impacted, but how was he impacted by this experience? With your adult mind today looking back on your childhood? Yeah, it's a very good question. I'm and also not just with my I doubt mind, but perhaps, you know, having been in some war zones myself, I mean, nothing like my dad, but it gave me a flavor of empathy and the level of intensity that you experience, the level of emotional intensity, the ups, the downs, the terror, the, you know, amazing feeling when you're safe, you know, all that sort of thing. And I think there's a side to this PTSD, which a lot of people find hard to acknowledge because it doesn't sound very good. But it's like that was the high point of my dad's life. You know, that, I mean, everyone was saying to him how awful it must have been during the war. But imagine that there's two years of kind of being on the run and being in the prison at war camp. I mean, you're never going to experience life as vividly and feel as a lie.

as you are then. And I think after that, I suspect everything felt a bit of a slightly grayer, less colorful, less, you know, yeah, I mean,

he stayed in the army for a bit, and then he did some teaching. He was a very gentle guy. But, yeah, I don't think he ever kind of felt that he, I mean, he still had some amazing experiences in the army.

He was based in Kenya and Egypt and things after the war, but nothing came close to that and that experience. But at the same time, being very British, he never talked about it. And so, I mean, I had this one memory when I was 14, and my sister and I, and we didn't have very much money, and we suddenly never went abroad for holidays. And suddenly my dad and mom said,

we're going down to Italy on holiday. And this was in the kind of late 70s, I guess. And we drove in our little car across the channel on the ferry and then down through France. And, you know, it was great. You know, it was a nice camping holiday. And then we get to the kind of middle of Italy and we pull up on the side of a road. And my dad suddenly disappears into the bushes for like an hour. and Liz, my sister and I had no idea what was going on.

I was like 13, I suppose. And he comes back and he's like shrieking and he's kind of joyous. And what he had done was gone to find the cave and he had found it. But what was weird is that he then, what seemed weird to me later was that he then never went to try to find the family that did Gregorios, right? I mean, he's right there in the same village and he doesn't go and see them. Why do you think? So what happened was that it turned out that they, my mom and I, my mom and dad tried to,

they did go to the village on the way back. I had had to go back to school and Britain, my dad, my sister had gone on. So there was just the two of them. And after we left, they did go to the village. and when we were sitting down with Katty with the family, I kind of said, you know, I began this whole prepared speech of apology saying, I'm really sorry my father never came back to see you in the village. And Antonio, one of the cousins, said he did. And I say, well, what do you mean he did? And he said, yeah, we know that your father and mother came to the village in the late 70s. And they asked for Alfonso and Maria. and they asked for the family. And they got a ride with a taxi driver, a local taxi driver, who knew that the Grigori's were in the village,

but didn't want to give up the price of the ride that they would get driving this British officer around. Interesting. And so he never told my dad. He said, oh, the Grigorios have moved away. Interesting. Wow. And of course, there was no Google.

There's no way of checking. Right, right, exactly. So my dad just went, oh, that's sad, you know. And it wasn't until 1985 when my dad was retired, my mama died, that my dad received in the post a VHS. Remember those? VHS video. Yeah.

Received a VHS. And my dad didn't even. Don't let my dyed hair confuse you about my age, Tom. Okay. I remember a VHS, okay? I remember an 8mm camera. Okay. Right, right.

Yeah. Well, yeah, I don't remember them. But my dad didn't even have a VHS machine. So I had to go out and buy VHS machine, plug this thing in. And it was the family who had reenacted that moment of Bush and kind of finding my dad. And it was kind of, I'd love to show it to you one day. It's like chaotic Italian and English and kind of lots of. lots of people and there's a horse makes an appearance in it at some stage and you know they're all

kind of trying to tell their bit of the story and what happened and how you know they'd found him in the bush and then they took them up to the farmhouse and they made this whole thing and somehow found my dad's address in england and sent it to him and that from then on we really established contact and you know my dad went to see them and um they came to stay with my dad and things. So that was great. I mean, at the end of his life, he was able to be reconciled with the family. Great, great, great, wonderful story. So, so, so we're down to the five words. Well, we're, me and my producer, we look through your book and we, we pick out words and we

want you to just react to them, okay? Okay. Wow. That sounds a bit daunting. Like a test. Is it a, you know, pass a one or two cents? I want to say the word. Whatever comes to your head, you give me a one or two sentence. Ross Sash. If I, yeah, exactly. If I say the word duty, you think of what? I think of, I think of solemn. It's kind of loaded, freighted, kind of tough.

Bravery. What about the word bravery? Unexpected. Yeah, we never know who the heroes are going to be, right? You never know how brave you're capable of being until you're put in that situation. Right. Amen. I agree with that, sir.

Italy. I say the word Italy. Passion. I mean, the Brits love Italy. I mean, come on, right? We love it. Italian's everything we want to be. You know, we can't get enough of Italy, right? I mean, come on.

Let's face it, right? Yeah, absolutely. By the way, my Italian cousins, as you know, I have a lot of relatives still in Italy. They say I'm American. They hurt my feelings every day when you tell me that. Oh, yeah. That's how you work too hard. You know, we're cutting an extra piece of cheese.

We have an extra bottle of wine. We already had our empire. We know it's a bunch of people. Yeah, exactly. You guys are working too hard over there. They don't have any insecurities. They know who they are. Unconditional love for Italy.

I think we both agree on that, right? Absolutely. I would be Italian. If I could be anything, I'd be Italian. I'd love it. Me too. If I could be anything, I would be Italian. It turns out they're telling me I'm not my relative.

I see myself as an Italian. All right. Richard Carver. I say the words Richard Carver. You think what? I think love. Yeah. I think love for this complicated man who, you know, bottled up a lot inside him and went through a lot.

But, yeah, I loved him a lot as a dad. This was a, it's an amazing insightful story about his light, his tribulations, his travails. And is it to me, I mean, it should be, should be a stream, by the way. I see this as a, uh, a part stream somewhere. Uh, there's not much love action in it. You know, that's the only thing. thing, I think. You know, there's no kind of, Grinitpeltro. That's why it could be

fictionalized. You go off the board there, okay? Right? You got the, you got the German stup in the girl, right? I mean, come on, there's some stuff in there. All right, let's go to the last word, and I'm going to give you the last word, Tom. Monty. I say the word Monty. You say what?

I have to say one word. No, we don't have to say a word. You can give me a sentence, a paragraph. A Churchill said that if I hadn't been for El Alamein, Britain would the allies would probably have lost the war, right? It was the turning point. And so in a way... It was strategic and tactical, but also psychological for the Brits, right?

Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And for everyone, and for the Americans, because the Americans were starting to land in North Africa. They believed they could beat the Nazis after that battle. Exactly.

Absolutely. And then, you know, three months later, they landed on the mainland of Europe. for the first time in four years in Sicily or in the mainhead. So, you know, it was a huge turning point. And if, if that had failed, then everything would have been lost. And so, yeah, I will lot. When I read your book and I hear the word Monty, I say pain in the ass, but indispensable. Right?

I mean, and that's probably true for a lot of personalities like his, right? They're pains in the ass, but, you know, you need it. Like Patton, right? Was a pain in the ass and indispensable? Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I mean, generals come in two ways. They come as diplomats like Eisenhower was. Right.

All right. Well, they come as pain in the ass, you know, but God, you want them on your side. Amen, right? MacArthur. MacArthur, exactly. Right? Yeah.

Yeah. It's been great to have you on the show, Tom. The title of the book is, where the hell have you been? Monty, Italy, and one man's incredible escape. It's by Tom Carver, former BBC foreign correspondent. Thank you so much for joining us today on Open Book. Thank you.

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