Annan appeared to be very knowledgeable about all things Establishment and spy related, and their indiscretions. He told me Mountbatten was bisexual and had affairs with numerous young men, including an Indian prince!857
The former Conservative minister Keith Joseph had ‘said that Mountbatten had affairs with many young sailors whilst at sea – he said such liaisons were perfectly normal for men at sea; but he said that Mountbatten also bedded countless women . . . Mountbatten’s sexuality seemed to be an open secret in the circles I moved in.’858
In 1980, an article appeared in International Times claiming that Cecil King was so annoyed at Mountbatten’s failure to take part in his coup that he ‘forever after spewed out low-minded and scandalous observations about his former idol to anyone who’d listen. Even when he was rung up from Dublin by a television journalist to discover his reaction to Mountbatten’s execution by the IRA, he maintained that Mountbatten was a “sexual pervert” and that his wife Edwina had been a nymphomaniac.’859
That same year Now Magazine published an article under the headline, ‘Mountbatten was part of a gay ring which was linked with Kincora’, in which the Northern Irish writer Robin Bryans ‘claimed that leading British establishment figures were in a vice ring which abused boys from the notorious Kincora Home in East Belfast . . . that the late Lord Louis Mountbatten, Captain Peter Montgomery, a former intelligence officer from Northern Ireland, Sir Anthony Blunt, the infamous homosexual MI5 traitor, and Peter England, a senior member of the British Secret Service (MI6), who served undercover at Stormont in the 1970s, were members of an old boy network which held gay orgies in country houses and castles on both sides of the Irish Border.’860 It added that ‘Mountbatten was a great one for boys in the first year of public school, like at Portora Royal, which was thirteen and fourteen.’861
In April 1990, Now Magazine returned to the subject with an article which claimed that, according to some Belfast journalists, Mountbatten lived a secret life both in Eire and, more particularly, Northern Ireland. ‘Lord Mountbatten was interested in what homosexuals call “the rough trade” and liked to have contacts with working-class youths. He was particularly attracted to boys in their early teens.’862
Robin Bryans, also known as Robert Harbinson, a few months later made the same accusation in a private letter, claiming: ‘Kincora and Portora Boys’ Schools were used as homosexual brothels by many prominent figures, including Lord Mountbatten, James Molyneux . . .’863 He went on to say of Mountbatten that, ‘In the 1930s he had shared Anthony Blunt’s butch lover, Alan Price.’864
The Now Magazine articles and Robin Bryans’ claims were dismissed, but now a new person has come forward, who is using a pseudonym. ‘Sean’ was 16 years old when he says he was driven from the Kincora Boys Home in Belfast to Classiebawn in the summer of 1977. As the men who had brought them waited outside, ‘Sean’ remembers being taken into a darkened room where he was joined by:
a man who undressed me and then gave me oral sex. I was there about an hour. He spoke quietly and tried to make me feel comfortable. He was one of those men who wanted attention, wanted you to chase him . . . I think he felt some shame. He said very sadly, ‘I hate these feelings.’ He seemed a sad and lonely person. I think the darkened room was all about denial . . . He grabbed my hand and put it on his chest . . . I only recognised who he was when I saw on the news that Lord Mountbatten had been killed.865
Another 16-year-old boy from Kincora, who is using a pseudonym, remembers being brought to Mullaghmore during the summer of 1977. ‘Amal’ says he met Mountbatten four times that summer on a day trip from Belfast. Each time the encounter, lasting an hour, took place in a suite at a hotel by the harbour about 15 minutes from Classiebawn.866 ‘Amal’ remembered:
He was very polite, very nice. I knew he was someone important. He asked if I wanted a drink or candy. He told me he liked dark-skinned people especially Sri Lankan people as they were very friendly and very good-looking. I remember he admired my smooth skin. We gave each other oral sex in a 69 position. He was very tender and I felt comfortable about it. It seemed very natural. I know that several other boys from Kincora were brought to him on other occasions.867
Hints at Mountbatten’s bisexuality are provided by Ron Perks, who has spoken for the first time about an episode over 70 years ago. Perks, who served in the Royal Marines from 1944–57, was appointed Mountbatten’s driver on his arrival in Malta in 1948. Mountbatten’s predecessor commanding the First Cruiser Squadron, Rear Admiral R.V. Symons-Taylor, had told him, ‘You are going to be the driver of my successor. I want you to find out all these places’:
The Red House near Rabat was amongst them. It was an isolated, baronial-style building with a flat roof. One day as we were driving along, Mountbatten asked if I knew the Red House. I said I did and he asked if I would take him there, which I did. I never dropped him there, but he had his own car which he used often. He wouldn’t have asked me for nothing. I didn’t know what it was and only learnt after I came out of the service that it was an upmarket gay brothel used by senior naval officers. You’re taught to keep out of trouble in the Navy and I’ve never said a word about the incident until now.868
The son of one of the ADCs on Mountbatten’s staff said that whilst his:
father was posted at SHAPE in the mid-1950s (which was then located at Rocquencort next to Versailles), he remembered a succession of young men being taken up to Lord Mountbatten’s suite in a hotel in Paris, which raised a few eyebrows at the time. I was particularly struck by my father’s disapproval as he was not a particularly censorious person, and I think that it was the indiscretion of Mountbatten’s behaviour which surprised him most.869
My father left no doubt that the young men were there for sexual favours and not part of the Army/Civil Service. I have always imagined that it was in the evening and would have been single men, but on a regular basis. The way my father told the story implied that a significant number of people knew about it, hence his disapproval.870
One of Mountbatten’s most fruitful sources of young men was the Life Guards. Nick Best, who served in the Grenadier Guards, remembers that: ‘It was said when Mountbatten was the Colonel of the Life Guards, he always took every new officer out to dinner to explore the homosexual potential.’871
The writer Nigel West is convinced Mountbatten was bisexual, giving three reasons:
1.My father worked for Mountbatten on the Joint Planning Staff at Kandy, and heard about the outrage when Mountbatten arranged for the transfer of the alleged boyfriend, Peter Murphy.
2.A good friend of mine [name deleted] was very shocked when he applied to join the Life Guards (or some similar smart cavalry regiment) and was offered an interview with Mountbatten (I think through a godfather), who then promptly propositioned him! [Name deleted] was appalled. Allegedly, at around the same time (late 1960s) Mountbatten was caught with a Guardsman in St James’s Park and the Palace declined to intervene when the Yard reported the incident.
3.When I worked at the BBC’s General Features Department at Kensington House in 1978 (then headed by Desmond Wilcox), a neighbouring programme filmed an interview with Mountbatten, at his request, in which he acknowledged his homosexuality. The rumour was that the film, intended to be broadcast after his death, was suppressed by the Palace.872
When interviewed, the friend of Nigel West said that he had met Mountbatten for a very good lunch at White’s Club:
He was very charismatic and attractive and wit and humour will get you everywhere. It was certainly true of Mountbatten. He was bloody funny. Age meant nothing to him. If you had a bit of gumption, he liked you. About two-thirds of the way through the lunch, his hand appeared on my knee and stayed there. West had warned me he was a switch-hitter and would bonk anything, so I wasn’t worried. We just made a joke of it. ‘Why do you think I’m Colonel in Chief of the Life Guards,’ he said. ‘We have such beautiful boys.’873
Mountbatten’s male lover for the last eight years of his life is now
in his seventies, but looks considerably younger. Handsome, smartly dressed and well-spoken, meeting for lunch he remembers his times with Mountbatten, a near neighbour, with great affection:
He was lovely and great fun. I saw him at least once a month, sometimes for a chat, sometimes for more. He was a great mentor to me, introducing me to all sorts of useful people, and we had lovely times together. He was perfectly relaxed about our relationship, in spite of the forty-year age gap, and certainly felt no shame. I was always up for sex, so happy to see him. He would ring to warn me when he wanted to pop round. John Barratt knew all about it and did not mind. His death was a great shock.874
Further evidence of Mountbatten’s bisexuality comes from FBI files. In February 1944, the American writer and society figure, Elizabeth de la Poer Beresford, Baroness Decies, was interviewed by the FBI about another matter. But the FBI report reads:
She has been an intimate of the British Queen Elizabeth, Queen Mary and her ladies-in-waiting. She states that in these circles LORD LOUIS MOUNTBATTEN and his wife are considered persons of extremely low morals. She stated that Lord Louis Mountbatten was known to be a homosexual with a perversion for young boys. In Lady Decies’ opinion he is an unfit man to direct any sort of military operations because of this condition. She stated further that his wife Lady Mountbatten was considered equally erratic and that it was known that Paul Robeson, coloured singer and actor, was her paramour . . . At the present time LADY DECIES is residing at the Plaza Hotel in New York and appears to have no special motive in making the above statements. With the exception of the fact that LADY DECIES is greatly worried about the safety of her Paris home, she appears to be otherwise normal.875
Ulius Amoss’ accusations in 1952 against the Mountbattens had been dismissed by the FBI, but in November 1955 an FBI file was opened on Edwina, most probably because of her close association with Krishna Menon and her various political pronouncements on India and Africa and during the Suez Crisis. The FBI at the same time sent a report to the Department of Justice on Mountbatten’s homosexuality.876 In April 1957, the FBI produced a memo on allegations of an affair between Paul Robeson and Edwina and in September 1959 her file was again reviewed.
In May 1968, further accusations against Mountbatten were supplied to the FBI by John Grombach, who has been described as ‘one of the most remarkable and yet least known intelligence leaders in American history.’877 Grombach, a brigadier in the New York National Guard, under cover of a company called Industrial Reports, ran his own independent spy operation for J. Edgar Hoover ‘known informally as the “Pond” that conducted espionage operations for the US government from 1942 to 1955.’878
An international fencer, who also claimed to have been a stunt double in Hollywood movies, Grombach had been educated at West Point and worked in the State Department during the war dealing with British Intelligence. He told the FBI: ‘the person who furnished a report in 1953 regarding the alleged homosexuality of Anthony Eden, Earl Mountbatten and Anthony Nutting, was believed to be Lady Judith Listowell, née Márffy-Mantauno.’879
Born Judit Márffy-Mantuano de Versegh et Leno on the family estate in Hungary, the daughter of a Hungarian diplomat, Listowell had studied at Budapest University and the London School of Economics, where she met ‘Billy’ Hare, the future 5th Earl of Listowel and Viceroy of India, which gave her access to British social and political circles – her soirées in Belgrave Place during the war were famous. They had married in 1933, but divorced 12 years later, and she later served in the Hungarian diplomatic service and worked as a journalist and writer.880
Much of Mountbatten’s FBI file, only part of which was released after Freedom of Information requests, remains closed. Some of the Kincora files at the British National Archives from the late 1970s and early 1980s are ‘Temporarily Retained by Department’, whilst others, which were due for release in 2018, were in August that year extended for a further period. One has to ask why.
Was Mountbatten perhaps abused as a young boy? The thirteen-year-old Dickie, recovering from whooping cough and bronchitis, spent several weeks alone at Bridport in Dorset in the summer of 1914 with a private tutor called Frederick Lawrence Long. Long, then in his early thirties, had left the Royal Navy to train for the ministry a few years earlier and was doing some private tutoring.
The friendship between Mountbatten and Long, which continued after their sojourn in Bridport, was close – Long was to officiate at Mountbatten’s wedding – and is marked by some intense correspondence. ‘Dear Kid, I have one special pupil now – Prince John de Mahe. He is about your age & a decent enough kid but you need not be jealous as you know there is only one Dick in the world for me & there never will be anyone before or anywhere near him in my affections,’ wrote Long to Dickie in February 1916. ‘It is hardly necessary for me to add that I would give anything to wipe the floor with you. Goodbye my best beloved & dearest kid. With all my love, ever yours affectionately, F. Lawrence Long.’881
Shortly afterwards, Long, who never married, wrote to his former pupil:
I don’t expect you know how much I would have given for a line from you dear for several reasons, but don’t worry yourself, and anyway, God bless you for the times of happiness we have had together and keep you always safe in body and soul . . . All my love to my best friend.882
Then, after Mountbatten had been the first to congratulation Long on his ordination later that month:
You won’t find that ordination makes me any the less yours or you any the less mine; although I think I understand just what you felt. However many things there may be to do & think about there will always be time to think about you – and in the way that will be of most use. The use of those envelopes is a sound idea – very as I always have had an idea you wished to say more, in some ways, than you cared to do . . . you are constantly in my thoughts. Best of love, your devoted, Lawrence.883
Quite apart from the familiarity of Long’s letters, one has to question, given Mountbatten kept almost every letter sent to him and this was clearly a close friendship, why there is so little correspondence between the two men in the Mountbatten archives and why should a tutor and his pupil communicate through double envelopes. Even though Long officiated at his wedding, Mountbatten makes no reference to him in his letters to his family, nor does he appear in any book on Mountbatten. It is a relationship worthy of closer study.
CHAPTER 29
Legacy
After his death, various ideas were put forward to commemorate Mountbatten, including a statue on the extra plinth in Trafalgar Square, the foundation of a Chair of Commonwealth History with bursaries along the lines of the Rhodes Trust, and even that the August bank holiday be known as ‘Mountbatten Day’, though this was dismissed as ‘it would be better to commemorate Lord Mountbatten through a memorial which related to his achievements, rather than one which drew attention to his death.’884 Instead, the Mountbatten Memorial Trust was set up to support the charitable organisations with which he had been most associated, especially technological research and support for the United World Colleges movement.
Eventually it was also agreed to erect a bronze statue on Foreign Office Green, overlooking Horse Guards. In November 1983, Her Majesty the Queen unveiled the nine-foot memorial statue by the Czech sculptor, Franta Belsky, of Mountbatten as Admiral of the Fleet, standing holding binoculars with eyes fixed on the Old Admiralty Building.
In her speech she paid tribute to her husband’s uncle:
Why was it that the moment Lord Mountbatten came through the door he seemed to fill the room? It was first and foremost the vitality and force of his personality, combined with an astonishing range of abilities. He could be farsighted with enormous breadth of vision and yet he could also concentrate on the minutest detail of any problem – a perfectionist who always mastered his subject. Add to this unfailing courage, immense charm and a never flagging determination to get his way, and you have a truly formidable character. Above all, he was a natural leader wh
o managed to convey to those who worked with him his sense of enthusiasm and dedication.885
In July 1980, Dick Hough’s biography appeared with a three-day serialisation in the Sunday Telegraph. Even though the book was a broadly sympathetic account and made little reference to his private life, the Broadlands Archives trustees, led by John Brabourne, took exception to Hough’s claim that it was authorised – Mountbatten had given him many hours of interviews, but for a book on his parents – to protect the official biography by Philip Ziegler. They fought a High Court battle, which they won, requiring Hough to deposit all his material with them – material that is still not publicly available – and pay legal costs of £20,000. The final order was so secret that it was made in Chambers rather than Open Court and the affidavits kept secret. A penal notice prevented him from even discussing the settlement.886
Later in the year, Charles Smith’s Fifty Years with Mountbatten, a memoir by his butler, and long discussed with Mountbatten, appeared. Smith had begun work as Edwina’s travelling footman in 1930, before being made Dickie’s valet in 1936 and becoming butler in 1954. Since his retirement in 1974, he had worked as an archivist and guide. It provided an affectionate portrait of the family and their guests and was never going to land him in the High Court.
In November 1980, Ludovic Kennedy’s six-part television series, Lord Mountbatten Remembers, which had been filmed the previous summer with instructions that it should not be transmitted until after Mountbatten’s death, was shown. Interviewed by John Terraine, he reflected on his life and career. Kennedy later wrote, ‘A working title for it might have been “How I Got My Way and Was Proved Right in Everything I Did.” Then I remembered Stephen Roskill telling me not to believe a word Mountbatten said or claimed unless it was corroborated from other sources.’887
The Mountbattens Page 32