Let’s be honest: lockdown sucks! But it does mean there’s more time for reading. Over the next couple of weeks, I will review 10 books which all Royal History Geeks should add to their reading list
I have no memory of the famous assassination of Louis ‘Dickie’ Mountbatten. It took place three years before my birth and was never something mentioned at school. Yet, growing up in a coastal city with strong naval presence, his name was one I knew well. The pub at the end of my road was even named after him.
Perhaps it was for these reasons that I decided, aged about 15, that he was my favourite minor royal of the 20th Century. Yes, you’re right. I was a super-cool teenager.
Discovering my interest, some friends of my parents procured me a book about the late Earl when they passed a charity shop. It was a kind gesture. But the book was second hand and dusty with yellow peeling pages. More worryingly the contents were dry and – most unwelcoming to a teenager – almost entirely reverential.
Such a book could simply never do justice to the scandalous Earl Mountbatten of Burma. It certainly failed to capture the spirit of Edwina, his equally sensational Countess. And, with thanks to a dial up modem and the early days of the internet, I soon found out just how much my dusty manuscript had been missing.
‘The Mountbattens’ by Andrew Lownie is an altogether more vibrant, more honest and more satisfying account. A collective biography of the couple, it’s 388 pages explore their personal and public adventures in glorious – and occasionally graphic – detail.
The book guides us through the lives of both protagonists in parallel up until the point they meet and marry. For many Royal History Geeks, the early adventures of Dickie – or His Serene Highness Prince Louis of Battenburg, as he was known for the first 17 years of his life – will more immediately pique interest. It was he that had the royal connections and it was he that was closer to the famous events of that era that many of us will recognise.
As the narrative progresses however, Edwina and her story more than hold their own. Not one to take a back seat, the wealthy heiress never risks becoming a supporting character. The pages that explore her relationship with Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, are among the most tantalising in the book.
The Mountbattens were at the centre of major events ranging from world wars to royal weddings. But their role in delivering the independence of India will be the one that history remembers. And their actions in this role, the ones that historians will judge. Current analysis tends to be kind to the couple. The author seems to agree.
Despite the high drama of their combined career, the book’s most intriguing pages are those that touch on the personal. I had always known that the Mountbatten’s ‘enjoyed’ an open marriage. But I’d failed to realise was that this was initially to accommodate Edwina’s desires and interests. Dickie, Lownie tell us, was hurt by his wife’s distance and adultery. It would, however, be an arrangement that the Earl would more than grow in to.
Whatever the ups and downs of their relationship, their parting was a painful one. Lownie describes Edwina’s quiet death and Dickie’s grief with perfect poignance. In contracts, Dickie’s assassination in 1979 is detailed with the drama it deserves.
The rumoured bisexuality of Louis Mountbatten is explored at length. The author seems convinced that evidence for homosexual behaviour exists and his presentation of said evidence is certainly compelling. While this is hardly likely to ruffle many feathers with the modern reader, darker accusations of under-age sexual encounters exist. The author does not dismiss them.
Throughout the book, the slow transformation of Prince Louis of Battenburg and Miss Edwina Ashley to the Earl and Countless Mountbatten of Burma is told with a pacey, compelling tone and accessible language. It is perfectly suited to those who already know much about the controversial couple and to Royal History Geeks that have never come across them before.
The Mountbattens are still figures of living memories. It is probably too early to measure their impact and assess their legacy. But as this biography shows, their marriage, lives and career contain all the necessary ingredients to establish the couple as figures of interest for future generations. Let’s hope that as tomorrow’s historians take up this mantle, they do so with the acute observations, careful analysis and skilful articulation of this biography.
The Mountbattens: Their Lives & Loves by Andrew Lownie is available from Amazon.
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