Review

Much has been written about the Mountbattens as they lived a highly public life around the world and hobnobbed with royalty, presidents, prime ministers, and celebrities. Both of them, Lord Louis Mountbatten (1900-1979) and his wife Edwina (1900-1960) were notable in their own right. He was known as Prince Louis of Battenberg from the time of his birth until 1917 when he and other relations of King George V dropped their German styles and titles, changing Battenberg to Mountbatten. When he was baptized, his godparents were Queen Victoria, Nicholas II of Russia, and Prince Francis Joseph of Battenberg. Young Mountbatten's nickname among family and friends was "Dickie" and he would be called this for life. In 1922, Dickie married the beautiful Edwina Ashley, whose maternal grandfather was Sir Ernest Joseph Cassel, one of the richest and most powerful men in Europe who, when he died, left the bulk of his fortune to Edwina. By the time she married Dickie, she was already a leading member of London society. Author Andrew Lownie sought to throw new light on the two of them through a joint biography. Lady Edwina was a privileged, spoiled free-spirit who had the money to do as she pleased. Easily bored, she traveled widely, partied, and selected lovers to her heart's content. She made little attempt to hide her many affairs. She was reckless, selfish, and inconsiderate, but for the most part, Dickie stuck with her as she went through one affair after another, including African-Americans Paul Robeson and Leslie Hutchinson, various nobles and celebrities and, in later years, Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. She came into her own in her important humanitarian work. Dickie was over-the-top ambitious, hard-working, and intelligent, but he did have a big downside: He was pompous with an inflated sense of his talent. He climbed the ladder of success over the years in ever-more-important postings, but some noteworthy failures occurred (e.g. Dieppe, the 1947 partition in India) along with his successes. For this reason, his legacy contains conflicting elements. Speculation about his sexuality over the years suggest that he was gay - or at least bisexual - and that he had pedophiliac tendencies. Edwina died in her sleep of unknown causes in Borneo in 1960 at age 59. Dickie was assassinated in 1979 in Ireland by a bomb set in his fishing boat by the Provisional Irish Republican Army. This uncle of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, and second cousin of Queen Elizabeth II, was 79.

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