Lord Louis Mountbatten (1900-1979) was one of the main figures of twentieth-century British history. The man who led the crucial phases of India’s independence (1947), allowing the birth of Pakistan, but also the uncle of Prince Philip and the guidance of the young Prince Charles. His figure, also present in the Netflix series “The Crown”, contributed to changing the fate of millions of people. During his life Lord Mountbatten wrote many diaries, a common habit among the nobles and politicians of the time (and not only), recounting not only private matters, but also political ones. Some of these documents, however, are still kept secret today by the British government, as they could represent a threat to the “dignity” of the Crown.
Lord Mountbatten
Louis Mountbatten, British Admiral, Earl Mountbatten, was the last Viceroy of India, cousin of Queen Elizabeth and maternal uncle of Prince Philip. In fact he was the brother of Alice of Battenberg, or the mother of Philip of Edinburgh. Not only that: Louis, born Prince of Battenberg, was the second son of Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine, direct granddaughter of Queen Victoria’s daughter.
This also means that Mountbatten was the nephew of Alexandra Fedorovnalast Tsarina of Russia, since the admiral’s mother was Alexandra’s sister. These are important clarifications because they give us the background of the last Viceroy of India, his role in the royal dynasty and his connection with the royal family, fundamental elements for understanding where his human and political adventure started.
In 1937 Mountbatten became a captain in the Royal Navy and in 1939 took command of the destroyer HMS Kelly, which played an important role in the defense of the Allied Forces during the Second World War. In 1943 he was promoted to the rank of admiral by Winston Churchill and in 1947 he was created 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma. In February 1947 the then Prime Minister Clement Attlee appointed him Viceroy of India, with the task of leading the nation towards independence.
On 27 August 1979 Louis Mountbatten was the victim of an attack byANGER while on his boat, the Shadow V in Mullaghmore, County Sligo, Ireland. Three other people died with him: the mother-in-law of the admiral’s eldest daughter, Patricia, the latter’s son, Nicholas and one of the crew members.
Louis, Philip and Charles
Lord Mountbatten’s novel life is also partly told in the first four seasons of the Netflix series “The Crown”. In particular, the fiction focuses on the marriage between Louis and the heiress Edwina Ashley (1901-1960). A union that would be characterized by numerous infidelities on both sides. “The Crown”, however, also highlights the role that the admiral would have played in the lives of the Prince PhilipQueen Elizabeth and the then Prince Charles.
In 1928 the future Duke of Edinburgh he was sent to the UK to attend Cheam School. It was Mountbatten who guided him in his studies, career and even his love life, taking him, as they say, under his wing. It seems that the admiral was determined to have his nephew join the British royal family. An idea born not only from affection and altruism, but also from political calculation. What better way than marrying the young heir to the throne Elizabeth?
In July 1939 Mountbatten would arrange the visit of George VI and family members at Dartmouth Royal Naval College, where eighteen-year-old Filippo was studying, in the hope of introducing the boys to each other. He would even order his nephew to guide Elizabeth and her sister Margaret inside the academy. According to the biographies, it was on that occasion that the princess, who was thirteen years old at the time, began to have feelings towards Philip.
After that meeting the two got to know each other better through an extensive correspondence, always under the watchful, but never invasive, gaze of Mountbatten. The rest is history: Elizabeth and Philip, after overcoming George VI’s initial perplexity, married on 20 November 1947. Lord Louis also exercised considerable influence on the firstborn of the sovereign and the duke: the current King of ‘England Charles III. The strong bond between the two is well highlighted in “The Crown”, particularly in the penultimate episode of the second season when, as Town and Country Magazine recalls, Mountbatten becomes Carlo’s mentor in all respects.
This is what happened in reality. The then Prince of Wales he trusted blindly “Uncle Dickie”as he used to call it. In 1979, the New York Times points out, Carlo declared: “I admire him almost more than anyone I know.” Admiral was also called “the honorary grandfather” of the children of Elizabeth and Philip, so much so that in 2015, during a visit to the site of the IRA attack, Carlo himself was keen to point out: “I couldn’t imagine how we could accept the anguish of such a loss given that, for me, Lord Mountbatten represented the grandfather I never had…”.
The diaries of Lord Louis and Lady Edwina
Mountbatten, however, was also the man of a thousand secrets, many of which were contained in his 47 diaries, in his wife’s 36, Lady Edwina Mountbatten and in the couple’s correspondence with some of the most important political leaders of the time (sources speak of 4,500 boxes of material). In 2011, The Week reports, the admiral’s family sold these historic documents to the University of Southampton for £2.8 million. The institute would have liked to digitize them to make them available online.
However, he could not begin the operation: the Cabinet Office of the United Kingdom government gave orders to censor all material. According to the official justification, cited by the Telegraph, the diaries necessarily had to remain a state secretsince their contents would have been “a provocation in the eyes of the government”.
In 2017 the historian Andrew Lownie tried, in vain, to obtain permission to access classified documents for his biography “The Mountbattens” (2019). He therefore decided to formally oppose this censorship and start a legal battle against the Cabinet Office which would cost him £250,000. In 2019 the kingdom’s Information Commissioner, who deals with information and privacy rights, ruled that all diaries must enter the public domain.
The Cabinet Office, as reported by the Times, appealed, arguing that “the information is too sensitive to be made public and the Queen’s dignity could be compromised.” Roger Smethurst, of the Cabinet Office, added that Mountbatten’s diaries might well have “compromise” diplomatic relations between United KingdomIndia and Pakistan. Already in 2011 Chris Woolgar, a professor at Southampton University, advised the Cabinet Office to omit some parts of the diaries, writing in an email: “I don’t think it should be available to researchers (the period) from the mid-1930s onwards, given the many references to the royal family.”
The Cabinet Office reportedly replied: “We believe we need to keep (these passages) private given the royal material you have already identified…even the material relating to India and Pakistan is, in some cases, still too sensitive.” The university obtained permission to digitize the documents, but the Cabinet Office again managed to censor some passages and completely block the publication of Louis’ diaries for the years 1943, 1947/’48 and Edwina’s diaries for the years 1947-’48 . These last two years correspond precisely to the period of partition and the independence of India.
On 19 July 2021, writes the Telegraph, 22 members of the House of Commons presented a motion to obtain the full publication of the diaries, which was also reiterated in court. Thus in the same year the Cabinet Office, which according to the Telegraph had spent 300 thousand pounds of public money in the legal action, he had to allow the publication of almost all the material. Regarding censorship Lownie, quoted by Times of India, commented: “…No university should block public access to archival material of great historical significance, which has been purchased using public money.”
Dangerous revelations?
Many of the parts first censored and then published do not contain any scandalous revelations. Why, then, did the Cabinet Office prevent its disclosure for years? The answer may lie in the still unpublished passages. According to the British press, in this material there are burning references to Louis Mountbatten’s alleged bisexuality and to several members of the royal familyincluding Charles and Queen Elizabeth. It is not clear, however, what nature such mentions would be, whether private, political, or both.
There would then be details, reports and impressions regarding the phases that led to the partition of theIndia. In particular the reasons why London would hasten the independence of the pearl of its empire. Officially, the economic consequences of the Second World War on Britain would also have contributed, but the British could not ignore the devastating impact of their almost immediate withdrawal and the partition of the nation.
Not only that: India’s independence occurred on August 15, 1947, but Great Britain and Mountbatten waited until August 17 to reveal the partition plans that literally severed the country to allow the birth of Pakistan (At the beginning Pakistan was composed of two territories, the western and the eastern one, separated by about 1600 kilometers belonging to India. The eastern part gained independence and became today’s Bangladesh in 1971). This wait could hide historical questions, perhaps second thoughts or disagreements between the forces at play that we don’t know about.
Those days were crucial for the history of India: with the partition began what historical sources define as one of the largest mass migrations of humanity: around 14 million people moved from the subcontinent to the new Pakistan and vice versa: a fact that triggered real massacres, with a million deaths, bringing out in all its brutality the ancient rivalry between Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus.
The diaries could also tell what Lord Louis really thought of Gandhi (1869-1948, opposed to partition), but above all of Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964), i.e. the first prime minister of independent India and Muhammad Ali Jinnah (1876-1948), the founder of Pakistan. Apparently, in fact, Nehru and Lady Edwina would have had a relationship of which Mountbatten would have been aware and which he would not have opposed, perhaps for political reasons or because, according to rumors, his would have been a marriage “open”. It is impossible to establish the truth with certainty: the letters from the Viceroy and Nehru, in fact, are still classified.
With regard to Jinnah the question is even more complex. It seems that Mountbatten did not feel much sympathy towards him and did not support his ideas, on the contrary. Furthermore, the “father” of Pakistan died of tuberculosis just a year after the birth of the new state and his health was already seriously compromised during the negotiations for the partition of India. However, no one, not even Lord Louis, would have been aware of his real condition. The reason is understandable: the disease could have delayed, or even caused the project of the creation of Pakistan to fail.
During an interview given to the writers Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins for their book “Tonight’s Freedom” (1975), Louis Mountbatten
revealed: “If only I had known… the story would have taken a different turn. I would have deferred the granting of independence by several months. There would have been no partition. Pakistan would not have existed…”.