health was no longer good enough to perform effectively as DMI, and he was being placed on sick leave. He departed for Cannes in the south of France with his wife, child and daughter's nanny the following day. En route, he broke his nose in a fall at the Gare du Nord. It was later repaired by plastic surgeon Archibald McIndoe. In Cannes the family lived in a villa that Aly Khan lent them. Food was scarce in southern France, but the War Office supplied him with British Army rations for five people. While there he worked on his memoirs. On 27 June 1946, de Guingand relinquished his temporary rank of major-general and reverted to his substantive rank of colonel. After representations from Eisenhower, he was promoted to the substantive rank of major-general on 10 September 1946, with seniority backdated to 22 March 1945. In February 1947 de Guingand retired from the army. He hoped to secure the post of Governor of Southern Rhodesia, but despite Montgomery's endorsement, he was passed over in favour of Major-General Sir John Kennedy. Business career De Guingand moved to Southern Rhodesia, where he was involved in an unsuccessful business venture with David Stirling, the wartime commander of the Special Air Service, as chairman of Gemsbok, a construction company founded by Stirling and his brother Bill. He moved to Johannesburg in South Africa in October 1947, and pursued a career in business as deputy chairman of Tube Investments Ltd. In 1960, he joined the tobacco firm Rothmans as chairman of their Britain subsidiary. He was the head of the South Africa Foundation, an organisation founded in 1959 by Harry Oppenheimer, whose chief goal was to block economic sanctions against South Africa due to its Apartheid policies. On the occasion of his retirement on 9 December 1971, de Guingand strongly criticised Apartheid and the government of South Africa, saying that it had become a pariah state with a network of despicable laws. This reflected an evolution of his own thinking. De Guingand wrote books about his experiences. His wartime memoir, Operation Victory, was published in January 1947. The title was suggested by Moorehead. The book became a best-seller; it was serialised in The Times and ran through seven editions and two paperback impressions, but de Guingand unwisely directed his literary agent to negotiate a lump sum from the publisher, Hodder and Stoughton, instead of the royalties