He loathed much about modern Britain, the “violence, mugging, the effect of permissive legislation introduced by the Labour government, abortion, relaxation of censorship, the homosexual Bill, all that lot”. He campaigned strongly for the reintroduction of capital punishment and for stiffer penalties for criminals and was a vigorous opponent of both the IRA and industrial militants. Although very much a new boy in the Commons, he voted against membership of the EEC in October 1971 and remained deeply unhappy about British membership. His search for a winnable constituency was rewarded in the spring of 1969 when he emerged from 250 applicants to beat his fellow desk officer Sir Anthony Meyer to secure the Conservative nomination for Esher. In many ways the constituency and he were well matched, affluent, traditionally and uncompromisingly Conservative, but loyal to a fault. He fought hard on behalf of his constituents, whether against the destruction wrought by the decision to run the M25 through it or for the British Aircraft Corporation at Weybridge. Eight years of solid work was enlivened by his chairmanship of the Horton branch of the South Buckinghamshire Conservative Association, a brief foray into local politics on the Eton RDC, and an unsuccessful campaign against Sir Barnett Janner in Leicester North West in the 1966 general election.

Mather served as Assistant Military Attach?n Athens from 1953 to 1956, before moving to the War Office as GSO1 Military Intelligence, 1956-61. His final posting in the Army was as Military Secretary to GOC-in-C Eastern Command. In 1962 he resigned his commission as a lieutenant-colonel to take a desk officer’s position in the Conservative Research Department. By July Mather had returned to Montgomery’s staff, but he subsequently took a permanent commission, joining the 1st Welsh Guards in Palestine, where he remained until the end of the Mandate in 1948. His left forearm is badly shattered and there is a possibility that some of the nerve has been shot away; if this proves to be so then he might not have full use of his left arm.

In any case he will be over 2 months in hospital, and then a long period of convalescence will follow. It was the end of Mather’s war, although not of his friendship with Montgomery, of whom he told many stories, none odder than the way he despatched Mather after the war to recover his skiing boots that were on display in a hotel in Gstaad. In all, as Montgomery discovered when visiting him in hospital, Mather had 13 separate wounds “Thirteen, thirteen. Excellent, excellent” was the field marshal’s breezy comment, but his concern was shown by the care he took in letting Mather’s parents know the news. As he wrote to a friend, Carol has had an operation and one kidney has been removed. Attacked by a Focke-Wulf 190, his aircraft did not take evasive action The pilot had been killed at the controls. Major Dick Harden took over the joystick, while Mather, badly wounded, operated the flaps and they engineered a crash landing in marshy ground.

He won an immediate MC for a particularly dangerous piece of reconnaissance in Nijmegen the day after Operation Market Garden was launched. The town was still in German occupation and Mather came under fire, but completed his task successfully. Mather came very close to death on 9 January 1945 when taking part in an aerial reconnaissance of the forward area over Grave in an Auster. Montgomery invited him to rejoin his staff as GSO III (Liaison) and in that capacity he landed in Normandy on D Day plus 1 and carried out his daily task of reporting on operations throughout the Normandy campaign, the break-out and the drive north. After nine months in captivity, he made his escape at the time of the Italian armistice and, with some 600 others, walked through the Apennines to rejoin the Allied forces at Campobasso, north-east of Naples. By November 1943 he was back in England, where he joined the 2nd (Armoured) Battalion of his regiment. However, Mather could not resist the temptation to take part in another operation with Stirling, who was planning to penetrate deep into Tripolitania and strafe enemy vehicles along the 500-mile road between the British front line at El Agheila and Tripoli.