Lord Montagu was a 27-year-old British aristocrat when he went to prison in 1954 over a beach-hut weekend with two RAF airmen. Decades later he described it simply: "We had some drinks, we danced, we kissed, that's all." Born on this day in 1926, a century ago, Montagu was tried with his cousin Michael Pitt-Rivers and journalist Peter Wildeblood. The airmen got immunity to testify, and Wildeblood's love letters were read aloud in court. "Reading out the letters was the cruellest thing," Montagu said. He got 12 months. The other two got 18. Then the crowd outside cheered them. "I was amazed," he said. That year the government set up the Wolfenden Committee, whose 1957 report led, a decade later, to sex in private between men over 21 being legalized in England and Wales. Montagu always denied the charges. In 2007, at 80, he put the rest plainly: "I am bisexual. To describe it any other way would be dishonest... I am what I am."