Later Life
After leaving the army Urquhart became an executive in the heavy engineering industry, retiring in 1970. In 1958 Urquhart published Arnhem: Britain's Infamous Airborne Assault of World War II (ISBN 0-9644704-3-8) detailing his exploits in the battle.
Urquhart was portrayed by Sean Connery in the 1977 film A Bridge Too Far, for which he himself served as a military consultant. Despite his earlier-mentioned friendship with David Niven, in a publication about the filming of the movie, he was quoted as saying that he wasn't much of a movie fan himself and didn't understand why his daughters were so excited at Connery's selection to play him.
He is the subject of the biography Urquhart of Arnhem (ISBN 0-08-041318-8) by John Baynes.
Urquhart and his wife Pamela had four children, among them Elspeth Campbell (wife of the former leader of the Liberal Democrat party Menzies Campbell) and Suki Urquhart, author of The Scottish Gardener.
In his memoirs, Campbell says that Urquhart told Elspeth's first husband, Philip Grant-Suttie, "there's no need to be formal; just call me General", and that he also insisted on tasting all the food and champagne for Elspeth and Menzies' wedding before paying for it. He is also known to have told his daughter never to trust men who bought half-bottles of wine; Campbell bought Elspeth a full bottle on their first date.
Major General Urquhart died on 13 December 1988, aged 87 years.
Read more about this topic: Roy Urquhart
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“Women generally should be taught that the rough life men must needs lead, in order to be healthy, useful and manly men, would preclude the possibility of a great degree of physical perfection, especially in color. It is not a bad reflection to know that in all probability the human animal has endowments enough without aspiring to be the beauty of all creation as well as the ruler.”
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—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)