In the 20th century, many British military leaders came to have a critical view of Gordon with Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery writing that Gordon was "unfit for independent command, mentally unbalanced, a fanatic, self-imposed martyr", adding that he should never been sent to the Sudan and the Gladstone-Gordon relationship was a case study in dysfunctional civil-military relations. In 1953, the British novelist Charles Beatty published a Gordon biography "His Country was the World, A Study of Gordon of Khartoum", which focused on Gordon's religious faith, but for the first time noted what a tormented figure Gordon was; a man of deeply felt Christian convictions, full of guilt and self-loathing over his own sinfulness and inability to live up to his own impossibly high standards over what a Christian should be and desperately longing to do something to expiate his sinfulness. Like Strachey, Beatty found Gordon a ridiculous figure, but unlike Strachey who had nothing but contempt for Gordon, Beatty's approach was a compassionate one, arguing that Gordon's many acts of charity and self-sacrifice were attempts to love others since he was unable to love himself.