One of his grandsons’ girlfriends, who stayed several times at Broadlands and Classiebawn, remembered how Mountbatten was:
A massive interferer but his family loved and respected him. He loved his grandchildren and was wonderful with them. They would rib him, but he liked people to push back. He was great fun. A terrible flirt. He’d put his hand on one’s knee under the table at dinner. He thought it fitted the image of how he saw himself . . . The family were very unassuming and natural, especially in Ireland, but standards were still kept. Staff lined up to greet one when one arrived and when staying one’s clothes were laid out or packed in tissue paper. Mountbatten liked to eat sardines in their tin, but they were still served by a butler with the top neatly rolled back.788
Part of his ability to relate to children was that he was childlike himself, not least in his sense of humour. His grandson Michael-John remembered he ‘had the most wonderful giggle and he would love to sit with us and watch a Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton film. It didn’t matter that he had probably seen it before dozens of times. He loved slapstick and Laurel and Hardy were also two great favourites.’789
Timothy Knatchbull writes of the train set they had at home:
It comprised three sets of interconnecting tracks and a large array of electric points. My grandfather would take the controls and post children around the table to operate the points. Under his command it ran much better. He got excited when the trains ran well, frustrated when they did not, and cross if a member of the team was negligent and let the side down.790
Knatchbull especially loved his grandfather’s bus drivers’ version of the Lord’s Prayer, which he would recite:
Our Father which art in Hendon
Harrow be thy name
Thy Kingston come, Thy Wimbledon,
In Erith as it is in Hendon.
Give us this day our Leatherhead
And forgive us our bypasses
As we forgive those who bypass against us.
Lead us not into Thames Ditton
But deliver us from Ewell
For thine is the Kingston, the Purley and Crawley
For Esher and Esher,
Crouch End.791
Emma Temple, daughter of Robert Laycock and a godchild, remembers how he would regularly entertain her at Broadlands on Sundays when she was at boarding school. ‘He was the most fantastic godfather. I adored him . . . He was such fun to be with. Of course, he was terribly pleased with himself, but one just accepted that. He was so charming, incredibly warm and young at heart, though my parents were less fond of Edwina because she was so cold and not very nice to him.’792
* * *
As the Troubles worsened throughout the sixties, security at Classiebawn became a more important issue. In the summer of 1960, a telephone threat to the Dublin office of the Daily Mail had been dismissed as a hoax, but the local Garda Superintendent in Sligo reported back to Dublin: ‘While everything points to the fact that no attack of any kind on the Earl by subversive elements was at any time contemplated, it would, in my opinion, be asking too much to say in effect that we can guarantee his safety while in this country.’793 IRA chief of staff, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, later president of Republican Sinn Fein, claims he vetoed an IRA attack on Mountbatten in 1960 or 1961, because operations were not allowed outside Northern Ireland.794
It was not only the IRA who were a threat, but groups like the League of Empire Loyalists, ‘as he is known to hold liberal views on the Partition question . . . Earl Mountbatten is very friendly disposed towards the Catholic clergy, particularly the Jesuits, and it is thought that this attitude is frowned upon in certain quarters, who are hiding behind the guises of concern for his safety.’795
His protection became a bigger issue in the seventies. On holiday in the summer of 1971, he had 12 policemen protecting him ‘of which three have been on round-the-clock duty in the house, besides two police cars for escort duties. I think the Irish Government were afraid the IRA might try to kidnap me and offer me in exchange for some of their leaders who are now in internment in Northern Ireland.’796
In 1972 the advice was that he was safe, Arthur Hockaday of the Cabinet Office telling Mountbatten, who had reported an IRA activist in the village: ‘If you had no IRA man on your estate, you would probably be the only landowner in the Republic of whom this can be said.’797 The following year, protection was stepped up with a 15-man protection squad. After the 7th Earl of Donoughmore and his wife were kidnapped by the IRA as political hostages – they were released after a week – in June 1974, Mountbatten sought advice from his old friend, Sir Robert Mark.798
A raid on an IRA safehouse in Southampton, ten miles from Broadlands, had revealed that Mountbatten was one of over 50 IRA targets and a senior IRA intelligence officer confirmed there was a plan in the early seventies to attack Mountbatten as he left Classiebawn, but was called off to avoid ‘civilian casualties’.799 After discussing the risk with the Garda, Robert Mark wrote: ‘We cannot show the white flag to the IRA and although we do not think there is any real danger, we feel obliged to assure you that as many men as are needed will be applied to the task.’800 The August holiday, with a protection team of 28, was cut short that year.
In 1976, 20 members of the Garda were assigned to guard Mountbatten. Reviewing security in the spring of 1978, Scotland Yard decided that Mountbatten was also at risk in London and there were extra car patrols near Kinnerton Street. In August an attempt to shoot him on his boat was only aborted when choppy seas prevented the sniper lining up his target.801 The same year a loosened bung was found in Shadow V. It was clear the IRA were narrowing in for the kill.
Early in the summer of 1979, the broadcaster Ludovic Kennedy went to Broadlands to record an obituary programme:
Mountbatten looked much older than when we had last met, still handsome and alert, but with deaf-aids in both ears, wearing a blazer that now hung loosely on him, and in his walk the beginnings of old man’s shuffle. He had kindly invited us to what he called a light lunch, which consisted of an egg dish, lamb cutlets, a pudding, cheese and a dessert of frosted red currants, all served by a bearded butler and two footmen in naval battle dress.802
After lunch, Mountbatten was filmed talking about his life and the funeral arrangements he wanted. ‘Was all this . . . an act of consideration to pre-empt family arguments,’ Kennedy wondered, ‘or yet another example of his abiding vanity?’803
The summer was spent compiling a picture book to mark his eightieth birthday, 80 Years in Pictures. The idea had been that of Barbara Cartland – John Brabourne was against it, to protect a projected authorised biography in which the family had a financial stake – and much of the work was done by John Barratt, but Mountbatten relished the opportunity to look at his life again. David Roberts, the editor on the book, remembers visiting Mountbatten at Broadlands to go through the proofs:
The photographs I was looking through were much more interesting than snaps of Erroll Flynn or Chaplin. They had been censored to be sure, but there were still photos of Princess Anne in a grass skirt dancing on the Royal Yacht and intimate photos of Edward VIII. There were touching photographs of the Tsar’s children who were slaughtered during the Revolution. The idea of Lord Mountbatten as a child playing with these doomed children was touching. There were lots of photos of Mountbatten’s girlfriends of which he seemed proud and I did wonder if they were disguising other tastes . . . When he had nothing better to do, Mountbatten would come down to the photo archive in the basement to see how I was getting on and on one occasion invited me up to lunch with him. It was a beautiful day and we sat outside at a little table on the terrace overlooking the Test – the river whose course Capability Brown had changed so we could enjoy its serene magnificence from the house. The butler came to serve us with three frankfurters and Mountbatten solemnly cut one in half so we had equal shares.804
The book was ready in time for Christmas and Mountbatten was able to sign six copies just before he set off for his ann
ual Irish holiday.
* * *
In March, Sir Richard Sykes, British Ambassador to the Netherlands, and the MP Airey Neave had been assassinated by the Provisional IRA. In June, NATO Chief General Alexander Haig had narrowly escaped an IRA assassination attempt in Belgium meant for a senior British army officer, and in July, two IRA suspects were arrested on Lough Ross some ten miles from the County Monaghan home of one of the IRA’s top bombmakers, the Libyan-trained Thomas McMahon. Shortly afterwards, Mountbatten was advised not to go to Ireland by Chief Superintendent David Bicknell. ‘But the Irish are my friends,’ he replied. ‘Not all of them, my Lord,’ replied Bicknell.805
In spite of that, Mountbatten left at the beginning of August. Pamela, with two of her three children, would be there for the whole month and Patricia and her family planned to join them from their nearby holiday home, Aasleagh Lodge in County Mayo. However, security was stepped up, with 28 men providing a day and night guard at Classiebawn and a further 12 at Aasleagh.
One of those responsible for the family’s security was a 21-year-old corporal with the SAS-trained 177 Provost Company, the Army’s elite close protection unit, Graham Yuill, who had previously been personal bodyguard to General David Miller, commander of the Ulster Defence Regiment. At the end of July, he conducted a full risk assessment identifying Shadow V, which was often moored in the public bay and could easily be boarded unseen at night, as the most likely target.806 What especially concerned him was:
a car registered in Belfast – I remember the licence plate to this day. It kept returning to the quayside. At one point I remember looking at its occupants through binoculars. He was looking towards the boat through binoculars to the water. He must have been 200 yards from the quay.807
Yuill claims that:
According to intelligence just a few days after the event that said vehicle was already known to the RUC and army intelligence as a vehicle frequently used by the IRA for gun running and transporting bombs for the IRA. What’s more that vehicle had been bugged for months by British army intelligence tracking its movements.808
But Yuill’s report was not acted on and shortly afterwards he was told his services would no longer be required, and the Garda would henceforth be handling security.809 He was forced to sign a gagging order, which only expired in 2017.
The lack of security on the boat is confirmed in a letter from Robin Haydon, British Ambassador to Ireland, to the Foreign Secretary, Lord Carrington, explaining it was the first year the boat had not been guarded during the day nor searched before it sailed.810
* * *
Monday, 27 August, a Bank Holiday, was a gloriously sunny day. After days of rain the family had decided at breakfast that morning to drive the mile to Mullaghmore and go out in the 29-foot Donegal fishing boat, Shadow V, and lift the lobster pots they had set the previous day. Dickie’s grandchildren, Edwina and Nicholas (known as Nicky), had been playing backgammon. She had decided to remain behind, but the young boy was keen to go, telling his cousin they could finish the game on his return. Setting off after a late breakfast, they were accompanied by their Garda protection, Kevin Henry, and a uniformed officer.
At 11.30 a.m. Mountbatten, his daughter Patricia and her husband John, his 83-year-old mother Doreen and Patricia’s 14-year-old twins Nicholas and Timothy, together with 15-year-old Paul Maxwell (who holidayed in the village and helped with the boat) boarded Shadow V. With the two Garda detectives following the progress of the boat through binoculars from the shore, the boat cleared the harbour wall and headed for the open bay. Mountbatten, standing tall at the wheel, opened the throttle to gain speed. Also watching the progress of the boat through binoculars were another two pairs of eyes – belonging to members of the Provisional IRA.
At exactly 11.45 a.m., just as their boat reached the lobster pots, a few hundred yards away on the cliff top overlooking the bay, the PIRA team pressed the button, which activated the bomb they had planted on the boat, moored in the bay, the night before. Fifty pounds of gelignite exploded, sending showers of timber, metal, cushions, lifejackets and shoes into the air. Then, there was a deadly silence. Mountbatten’s body, his legs severed and most of his clothes ripped off in the blast, except for a fragment of his long-sleeved jersey with the badge of HMS Kelly on the front, was found floating face downwards in the water. He had been killed instantly.811
Shortly afterward, the Provisional IRA issued a statement through the Republican News in Belfast to the Press Association that ‘The IRA claim responsibility for the execution of Lord Louis Mountbatten.’
* * *
Arrangements for Mountbatten’s funeral, code-named Operation Freeman, had been in hand since 1967 and regularly assessed and refined with the latest review in March 1979. In 1971, Mountbatten, who wanted a magnificent State occasion, had outlined exactly what he wanted from the funeral service itself through to his burial. After first considering the Isle of Wight with his parents, he had opted for Romsey.812
Claiming he did not mind what form the service took, he then gave specific instructions over eight pages and with a four-page appendix. In death, as in life, Mountbatten would be a stickler for detail and the proper etiquette. He wanted the State funeral to follow the format for his father and was anxious to know what he was entitled to as an Admiral of the Fleet. How large a naval gun crew might he have? Could extra Royal Marines take part, given he had been Colonel Commandant?813 Should the French government send an official representative? Where should his coffin rest before the funeral and which organisations should send representatives? When the Lord Chamberlain, Lord Maclean, objected to ideas that were not in keeping with Mountbatten’s position in the Royal Family, Dickie simply went above his head to the Queen.
The funeral took place on Wednesday, 5 September at Westminster Abbey with 1,400 guests including the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh, the Prince of Wales, most of the crowned heads of Europe, Margaret Thatcher and four former Prime Ministers, and was televised in over 20 countries. As the funeral procession wound its way from the Chapel Royal to the Abbey, the gun carriage pulled by 130 sailors, it was watched by a crowd of over 50,000 spectators.814 Alongside marched eight pall-bearers of four admirals, three generals and a marshal of the Royal Air Force.
In front was Lance Corporal of Horse, Keith Nicklin of the Life Guards, leading Mountbatten’s charger Dolly with Mountbatten’s shining black thigh-boots poignantly reversed in the stirrups. The symbols of his naval and military ranks – his Gold Stick as Colonel of the Life Guards, his three-cornered cocked hat as an Admiral of the Fleet, his sword – lay on the top of his coffin covered by a Union Jack. Six cushions were required to carry all his decorations. Walking behind were his grandsons Norton, Michael-John and Philip Knatchbull and Ashley Hicks, followed by the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince of Wales, Duke of Gloucester, Duke of Kent and Prince Michael of Kent.
Mountbatten had always joked about how sad he would be to miss his own funeral. His instructions had been carried out faithfully – a 19-gun salute from King’s Troop Royal Horse Artillery, ‘Eternal Father’, ‘I Vow to Thee My Country’, ‘Jerusalem’, the prayer of Sir Francis Drake and Psalm 107, ‘They That Go Down to the Sea in Ships’, read by Prince Charles – following which he gave a 30-minute address.
From Westminster, the body was taken to Waterloo and by train to Romsey, where he was interred in a side chapel of the Abbey. Further services took place all over Great Britain and Ireland – two days later, an ecumenical memorial service at St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, attended by the Taoiseach and almost all the Irish Cabinet; a joint funeral for Nicholas and Lady Brabourne near the family home in Kent; and on 16 September, Stephen Roskill, not always a friend to Mountbatten when he was alive, spoke at a service opposite Mountbatten’s old Cambridge college:
It is certainly the case that when Mountbatten was born a fairy godmother endowed him most lavishly with gifts: good looks and a fine presence, courage and determination, a very quick and original mind, and the capacit
y to win influential friends. Undoubtedly, he made the greatest possible use of these gifts.815
On 20 December, a memorial service was held at St Paul’s for 2,000 people, where the Prince of Wales again gave the address. He remembered:
a constantly active brain which was never allowed a moment’s rest. There was always a new challenge to be overcome, fresh projects to be set in motion, more opposition to be defeated – all of which were pursued with a relentless and almost irresistible single-mindedness of purpose . . . Although he could certainly be ruthless with people when the occasion demanded, his infectious enthusiasm, his sheer capacity for hard work, his wit made him an irresistible leader among men.816
On Monday, 5 November the trial of Thomas McMahon, aged 31, a bombmaker with strong links with the PIRA’s South Armagh Brigade, who had been behind a series of landmine attacks against British troops, and Francis McGirl, aged 24, a known PIRA activist, opened in Dublin. The two men, who had been acting suspiciously, had been taken in for questioning at a routine road check even before the explosion.817
The evidence against them was circumstantial – the men had traces of gelignite on them and McMahon had specks of green paint from Shadow V – but intelligence confirmed that the attack had been ordered by Martin McGuinness, later Sinn Fein’s chief negotiator in the Northern Ireland peace process.818
It also emerged that a member of PIRA, who had taken responsibility for the Mullaghmore attack, had been a temporary member of staff during the 1978 holiday and Shadow V had been under surveillance until 18 August, when the local Garda had decided to henceforth rely on visiting patrols. There had also, it appeared, been an unsuccessful attempt on Saturday, 25 August – but the bomb had failed to go off. On 23 November, the court delivered its verdict. McMahon was sentenced to life imprisonment, but there was not enough evidence to convict McGirl.819
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