Mountbatten Series Starts Impressively

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32219, 11 February 1970, Page 3

Mountbatten Series Starts Impressively

Not every student is addicted to history, and many recall in later life the hours spent in extramural activities beneath the desk lid when they should have been payingattention to the fascinating story of, say, England’s industrial reforms of the last century. But if history lessons could have been as vivid and compelling as the first episode. on Monday night, of ‘’The Life and Times of Lord Mountbatten.” there would have been expressions of disappointment when the lessons ended. If the quality of this programme is maintained, the series will win very wide attention before the 12 parts are all screened. It will not command the attention of ' The Forsyte Saga” and “The Power Game” because not everyone is interested in biography, even when it has such a background as that of Mountbatten. Monday’s opening episode “The King's Ships Are at Sea” took the audience from 1900. the year of Mountbatten’s birth, to 1917, when the family name was changed from Battenberg. Lord Mountbatten. who does much of the narration, has a relaxed and pleasant manner, and he gave no indication that he had not spent a life-time before the searching gaze of the cameras. His comments were crisp and authoritative, his story of absorbing interest. Backing it, there was an extraordinary amount of old film, but modern techniques being

. what they are, they had somehow managed to remove from 'it the almost comic jerkiness which used to be present Alien some of the earliest moving pictures were presented in other historical series. Anyone with a feeling for the sea must have been delighted at some of the shots of naval revues, manoeuvres and battles. The past glories of the Royal Navy were paraded—simply, effectively, and not at much length. The 59 battleships at the Spithead ' review made a magnificent

sight and there were shots from the Battle of Jutland. Jin which 259 naval vessels took part. There was even movie film lof the Boer War, as well as of the funerals of Queen Victoria and Edward VII. And the navy steaming north at the outbreak of the First ;World War made a majestic i .sight. - European history, too, was . recalled in film, as a background to the Battenberg family history; the Battenbergs were the ruling family in Hesse. Lord Mountbatten is one of the great Englishmen of his time. Englishmen, as he took pains to point out. It was antispy and anti-German hysteria which forced his father, the

First Sea Lord, to resign after j 46 years with the Royal Navy, and which led to the! adoption of the name Mountbatten. “The Life and Times of Lord Mountbatten" is fascinating fare. And its screening; time is suitable for those who I will find most interest in it. —PANDORA.