Did Army overlook Arnhem hero?

DAME Judi Dench has no plans to retire. ‘You retire in order to stop doing the job you enjoy to walk, paint or travel,’ she says. ‘All those things. Well I get to do that and I never quite know what is going to happen next. I am doing the job that I would retire to do.’

TOMORROW sees the start of four days of commemorations of the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Arnhem.

But there will be one family notable by its absence — the descendants of Lieutenant-General Sir Frederick ‘Boy’ Browning, commander of the Airborne Corps in September 1944 and the man who decreed that the men of the Parachute Regiment would wear their unmistakable red beret.

‘For most military anniversaries, the Army makes a point of contacting specific families connected with the battles concerned,’ I’m told by a Browning family friend, ‘but apparently that didn’t happen on this occasion.’

The Parachute Regiment is too immersed in preparing for the commemoration to comment on its invitation policy, but it is assured of best wishes from Browning’s eldest daughter, Lady Montgomery, now 86.

‘It’s sad but I am just too old to attend and rather frail,’ she tells me.

Her father, who won a DSO aged 19 in World War I, as well as the Croix de Guerre, had sought advice about the colour of the Parachute beret from his wife – Daphne du Maurier. She wrote back to him saying: ‘Maroon would be very smart’ .

Browning landed by glider close to Arnhem — an objective, he memorably reflected, which was ‘a bridge too far’.