The Famous Mount batt ens

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31143, 20 August 1966, Page 4

The Famous Mount batt ens

The Mountbattens. Bv Alden Hatch. W. H. Allen. 456 pp. Bibliography and Index. This is the sixth of Mr Hatch’s biographies of famous people and he has done ample credit in this one to a gifted and famous family. The results of his labours are a full length portrait of Prince Louis of Battenburg (1854-1921), an even fuller one of his son Earl Mountbatten of Burma, and a short appreciation of the latter's nephew, the Duke of Edinburgh. The section devoted to Prince Louis is the most interesting in the book. Born of the morganatic marriage of a German prince with a lovely commoner, Prince Louis spent his early years with his • parents in their castle at Heilegenberg, but when his father's elder brother (the Grand-Duke Louis 111 of Hesse-Darmstadt) decided to recognise the marriage by creating his wife Countess of Battenberg, the family was once more accepted in Royal circles, and Prince Louis met his English cousins (Queen Victoria’s children) and conceived a great desire to follow in Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh's, footsteps, and join the British navy—then the most powerful in the world. ■Renouncing his German nationality, with paternal permission, he was allowed to realise his ambition, and after a brilliant naval career attained the exalted post of First Sea Lord in the troubled days which preceded the First World War. At no time were Prince Louis’ abilities or intense British patriotism in any doubt, but the English hatred for all things German, as the guns of the German army invading France became audible on England’s own shores, was such that the Royal family which had ruled England for 200 years was forced to change its German name and the Battenbergs to follow suit. Prince Louis had to terminate his life’s work and resign his post. Mr Hatch, perhaps naturally, condemns this “English hysteria” but his second-hand sources of information hardly qualify him to gauge British opinions at that time, much of which condemned the treatment of men like Prince Louis.

The person as brokenhearted as Prince Louis at

| his undeserved fate was his young son, Dickie—at that time a naval cadet at Osborne —who loved him dearly and fully intended to occupy his father's exalted position in the fullness of time. The end of the first war saw the Mountbatten family impoverished, but the handsome Dickie, a close associate of the Prince of Wales, with a good war record and unbounded energy was much in demand by London hostesses and in 1921 married Edwina Ashley, granddaughter and heiress of the Jewish banker Sir Ernest Cessell. Thus began a partnership that was ultimately to be of benefit to their countrymen though both parties were subjected to criticism by certain people in their own circle who mistrusted their close friendship with the reigning family, and the “influence" which Lord Louis was alleged to have on it to the furtherance of his own ambitions. Be that as it may, Lord Louis’ progress both before and during the last war, as well as that of his supremely able wife, in their various paths of duty cannot justly be faulted for inefficiency or swelled heads. They did indeed earn their personal title of Earl and Countess which followed their very tricky and thankless work as the last Viceroy and Vicereine of India. With the sudden death of his wife in 1960 Lord Mountbatten suffered an irreparable loss, and threw himself into work, as a solace. He was responsible for co-ordinating the defence services into one, unified command which brought him some unpopularity with the Army, Navy and Air Force alike as their cherished personal traditions were over-ridden, but was probably necessary in the light of modern defence strategy. Of Lord Mountbatten’s personal qualities, the author from his researches and interviews with- Lord Mountbatten’s associates has tried to be fair. He boldly records his subject’s alleged failings of vanity, ambition and arrogance when thwarted, but is unqualified in his admiration for the courage and independence of mind invariably shown by Lord Mountbatten when faced with difficult situations.

The last part of the book is devoted to a sketch of the Duke of Edinburgh which merely covers what is already known about him from his childhood to his present difficult but exalted role. This book will no doubt be popular, even though the author can only gauge the character of British people and its traditions and prejudices at secondhand.