847Roy Archibald Hall, To Kill and Kill Again (John Blake, 2002), p. 23.
848Paul Pender, The Butler Did It, (Mainstream, 2012), pp. 84–5.
849A.M. Nicol, The Monster Butler (Black & White Publishing, 2011), p. 68.
850Harris had achieved notoriety in a sex scandal ten years earlier with the Vicar of Stiffkey, who was unfrocked for associating with a prostitute. He was later eaten by a lion.
851Mountbatten was off duties in May 1943 from exhaustion.
852The article can be found at https://forums.richieallen.co.uk/archive/index.php?thread-1206.html. Twig was Nield’s boss, Chief Petty Officer Birch.
853Peter Thompson, Diana’s Nightmare (Simon & Schuster, 1991), p. 121.
854Ibid., p. 241. Richard Benjamin Douglas Wright (7/1/1907–22/9/1977).
855Anthony Daly to the author, 24 February 2019.
856Ibid., 22 February 2019.
857Ibid. According to The Abuse of Power, the founder of the National Association of Freedom, Viscount de L’Isle, was a client of the Playland homosexual syndicate. Other clients included Tom Driberg, Sir Michael Havers, James Molyneux and the former Governor of the Bank of England, Gordon Richardson.
858Ibid.
859International Times, 1 January 1980.
860‘Mountbatten was part of a gay ring which was linked with Kincora’, Now Magazine, April 1990, pp. 13–14.
861Ibid., p. 16.
862Now Magazine, September 1989. Bryans’ file with the Metropolitan Police was destroyed at an unknown date.
863Robin Bryans to A.K. Seedhar, 3 November 1989, letter kindly supplied by David Burke/Joseph de Burca.
864Ibid.
865Interview ‘Sean’, 19 November 2018.
866The two hotels in Mullaghmore by the harbour are the Pier Head hotel and Beach hotel.
867Interview ‘Amal’, 25 May 2019.
868Interview Ron Perks, 19 May 2018.
869Private information from a university friend of the author, 3 March 2018.
870Private information from a university friend of the author. 3 March 2018.
871Nick Best to the author, 21 March 2018. According to a former Life Guards officer, Mountbatten set up a young Life Guards officer in a flat in the mid-1960s close to Kinnerton Street. Interview 24 June 2019.
872Nigel West to the author, 19 February 2016.
873Interview with Nigel West’s friend, 27 April 2018. He said his mother-in-law, a Wren, had been one of Mountbatten’s lovers at SEAC. West is General Sir Michael West.
874Interview Mr ‘A’, 28 March 2019.
875E.A. Conroy to Director, FBI, 23 February 1944, FBI file 75045. Half the file, declassified for the author in 2016, remains closed.
8761 November 1956, FBI file 58216.
877Mark Stout, ‘The Alternate Central Intelligence Agency: John Grombach and the Pond’, p. 41 in Christopher Moran (ed.), Spy Chiefs, vol. 1 (Georgetown University Press, 2018). cf. ‘John Grombach and the Pond’, Intelligence and National Security. Aug 2016, vol. 31, issue 5, pp. 699–714.
878Stout, p. 41.
879Memo 29 May 1968, FBI file 62-75045.
880One of the other allegations was that ‘Lord Norwich had caught Eden sleeping with his (Norwich’s) wife; that Norwich had complained to Churchill, who had quieted Norwich down’. ‘Allegations of Homosexuality: Anthony Eden and Admiral Mountbatten 1956’, FBI file 202315.
881Frederic Long to M, 26 February 1916, MB1/A7. Prince John Bryant Digby de Mahe was the son of Prince Charles Digby Mahe de Chenal de la Bourbonnais and two years younger than Mountbatten.
882Frederic Long to Mountbatten, 1 May 1918, MB1/A7, Hartley Library.
883Frederic Long to Mountbatten, 29 May 1918, MB1/A7, Hartley Library. Long died unmarried, aged seventy-five, in December 1960.
Chapter 29: Legacy
884Andrew Hardman to Christine Stewart, 5 November 1979, FCO 87/842, TNA.
885Quoted William Pattinson, Mountbatten and the Men of the Kelly (Patrick Stephens, 1986), pp. 11–12. Allan Warren, a close friend of Mountbatten, successfully lobbied for an inscription on the outside of the green. In 1985 a brass plaque to Mountbatten was also unveiled by Prince Philip in Westminster Abbey.
886Rubinstein Callingham to Hough, 14 August 1981, Hough papers. It was also claimed that Brabourne ‘wanted a rake-off from the Hough book for the Mountbatten Memorial Trust and he wanted Hough to remove some references to the Royal Family, in particular some quotes given by the Queen.’ Private Eye, 13 February 1981, p. 6. The family also warned off Barbara Cartland, who was collecting a volume of tributes to Mountbatten.
887Kennedy, p. 373.
888Ibid., p. 374.
889ROSK 7/224-226, Churchill College Archives, Cambridge.
8905 November 1980, PREM 19/294, TNA.
891Kennedy, p. 374.
892The Times, 5 November 1980. Admiral Sir William Davis wrote to Hailsham the same day: ‘Dickie’s memory at times was a bit faulty as I had more than once to point out to him. The trouble was he tried to tackle three whole men’s jobs simultaneously. He was not as clever a man as his brother, nor for that matter as his wife, for whom I had a great regard.’ HLSM 1/1/16, Churchill College Archives, Cambridge.
893Somerville to Howard, 23 November 1982, R78/3190/1, BBC Written Archives.
894ROSK 7/224-226, Churchill College Archives.
895Ziegler had first suggested Ludovic Kennedy and Charles Douglas-Home, before it was suggested he might be the best candidate. Interview Philip Ziegler, 3 May 2017.
896Yola Letellier has one reference. The book was read by the Cabinet Secretary Robert Armstrong before publication.
897Marjorie Brecknock’s list of the inaccuracies in the book. MB1/K41a, Hartley Library.
898After Mountbatten’s death, he had worked briefly for a multimillionaire in Los Angeles, where he had come out as gay and caught Aids. When that job ended, he returned to Britain where he had worked as a road sweeper and died destitute in 1993. Allan Warren, Nein Camp (Bunnywar Books, 2012), p. 366. On the evening of Mountbatten’s death, a suicidal Barratt brought several bottles of 1947 claret to Allan Warren and they drowned their sorrows, Barratt subsequently retiring to bed with another male house guest, ‘Sooty’. Interview Allan Warren, 5 March 2019.
899Andrew Roberts, Eminent Churchillians (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1994), p. 55.
900Mountbatten has continued to be the subject or a main character in various films, including a drama, The Last Viceroy with Nicol Williamson in 1985; a 1998 film on Jinnah where James Fox played Mountbatten; a drama documentary, The Last Days of the Raj in 2007 with James Wilby as Mountbatten; and a 2017 film, The Viceroy’s House, starring Hugh Bonneville and Gillian Anderson. A drama based on Alex von Tunzelmann’s Indian Summer, starring Hugh Grant and Cate Blanchett, was cancelled after the Indian government took exception to the suggestion Nehru and Edwina had had a physical relationship. Mountbatten has also figured in numerous works of fiction, notably George McBeth’s The Katana and Christopher Creighton’s The Khrushchev Objective, which suggests he was murdered ‘for his role in preventing the assassination of Khruschev during a summit meeting in England in 1956’. The story of Edwina’s love affair with Nehru has inspired Catherine Clement’s Edwina and Nehru and Rhiannon Jenkins Tsang’s The Last Vicereine. Jeremy Kingston’s comedy, Making Dickie Happy, featuring Dickie, Noël Coward and Agatha Christie, was first performed in 2004.
901The collection also included material from the former Prime Minister Lord Palmerston and the nineteenth-century social reformer, the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury.
902Pat MacLellan to Malcolm Kimmins, 3 March 1980, by kind permission of General Pat MacLellan.
903Breese, p. 306.
904Daily Telegraph, 16 December 2012. Known lovers include Hugh Sefton, Tony Simpson, Leslie Hutchinson, Laddie Sandford, Antonio Portago, Mike Wardell, Larry Gray, Ted Phillips, Sergei Obolensky, Antony Szapary, Bobby Sweeney, Winston Guest, ‘Bunny’ Phillips, Bill Paley, Malcolm Sargent and
Nehru and possibly Sophie Tucker and Edwina’s sister-in-law Nada.
905Ziegler, p. 53.
906Barratt, p. 56.
907Lambton, p. 10.
908David Cannadine, New York Review of Books, 5 September 1985.
909Rear Admiral Royer Dick, ‘Earl Mountbatten as a Younger Officer: Some Comments of a Contemporary’, p. 2, MB1/N100, Hartley Library.
910‘The Viceroy’s Verdict’, The Spectator, 4 September 2004.
911Robin Neillands, A Fighting Retreat: British Empire 1947–1997 (Hodder & Stoughton, 1996), p. 80.
912Barratt, p. 133.
913Kennedy, p. 370.
914Interview John Festing, 17 April 2019.
915Interview Pat MacLellan, 28 February 2017.
916Philip Christison autobiography, p. 176. Churchill College Archives, Cambridge.
917Hoey, p. 208.
918Belt 3, Life & Times, p. 4, MB1/K319, Hartley Library.
919Woodrow Wyatt, Confessions of an Optimist (Collins, 1985), p. 162.
Index
Abdication Crisis 106–8
Abell, George 197
Abercorn, Duke of 160
Abercorn, Sacha, Duchess of Abercorn 291–3, 330, 350, 372
Abyssinian Crisis 100
Adam, Gen. Ronald 155
Administrative Box, attack on 158
Ainsworth (chauffeur) 73
Aitken, Max 300
Alanbrooke, FM Lord 312
Albert Hall 318
Albert, Prince (‘Bertie), Duke of York, see George VI
Aldrich, Bernard 383
Alexander, FM Harold, 1st Earl Alexander of Tunis 177
Alexandra, Queen 328
Alfonso, King 52, 70, 88, 95
Alice, Princess 9, 10, 13, 20, 111
All-India Muslim League 189, 190, 199–200, 204, 208, 211
American Locomotive Works 69
Amery, Julian 191
Amoss, Ulius 258, 365
Andrew of Greece and Denmark, Prince 13, 111
Andrew, Prince 278
Andrew (tortoise) 97
Angleton, Jim 317
Annan, Noel (Lord) 358
Anne, Princess, Princess Royal 278
Anti-German Union 16
Appeasement 112
Archer, Jeffrey 309
armament reduction 28
Armstrong, Robert 369
Armstrong, Sir William 323
Arnold, Ralph 156
Ashley, Edwina, see Mountbatten, Lady Edwina
Ashley, Mary 15, 19, 67, 68, 83, 114–15, 371
Ashley, Maud 15
Ashley, Wilfred 14–15, 16, 44, 47, 96
death of 113–14
Ashmore, Edward 303–4
Astaire, Fred 65, 98
Astor, David 146
Attenborough, Richard 133
Attlee, Clement 191, 192, 215, 220, 233, 243, 278
Atwood, Miss 19, 20
Auchinleck, FM Sir Claude 111, 159, 197, 206, 210, 222, 227, 341
Aung San, Maj.-Gen. 174
Ayer, Rao Sahib V.D. 222
Aylestone, Lord 324
Azad, Maulana 198
Backhouse, Sir Roger 103
Baden-Powell, Lord 67
Baillie-Grohman, VADM Tom 138, 139
Baker, George 311
Baktiar, Yahya 270
Baldwin, Stanley 106
Balfour, Lady, of Burleigh 383
Baring, Lady Grace 36, 38, 58
Baring, Poppy 36, 61
Baring, Sarah 185, 254
Baring, Sir Charles 36
Baring, Sir Godfrey 36, 38, 58
Barratt, John 182, 264, 273, 274, 281, 294–5, 299, 314, 321, 339, 349–50, 350, 364, 371–2, 374–5
BBC 363
Beaton, Cecil 282
Beatty, ADM David 70
Beaumont, Christopher 223, 224
Beaumont, Wenty 224
Beaverbrook, Lord 64, 68, 69, 75, 76, 233, 252, 253, 254, 300, 311
Beeching, Lord Dr 323
Belsky, Franta 367
Bennett, Arnold 76
Benning, Osla 185
Beresford, Elizabeth de la Poer, Baroness Decies 364–5
Berkeley Grill 69
Bernal, J.D. 129
Best, Nick 362–3
Bicknell, David 340, 383
Birkett, Norman 85, 86
bisexuality 350, 363, 364, 374
Blackburne, Lady Constance 23
Blake, George 307
Blanch, Leslie 88
Bletchley Park 144, 185
Blum, Suzanne 327
Blunt, Sir Anthony 359, 360
Bobo (wallaby) 113
Boissier, A.P. 12
Boothby, Lord 354
Bousfield, Robin 309, 310
Bow, Clara 76
Bowes-Lyon, Elizabeth, see Queen Mother
Brabourne, John, 7th Lord Brabourne, see Knatchbull, John, 7th Lord Brabourne
Brádaigh, Ruairí Ó 337, 347
Bradford, Kit 17
Bradford, Sarah 329
Brains Trust 187
Bramall, Edwin 303
Brecknock, John (‘Brecky’) 55, 76, 78
Brecknock, Marjorie 44, 49, 55, 75, 76, 78, 88, 94, 235, 312
Breese, Charlotte 88, 269, 352, 374, 387, 389
Brice, David 309
Brinz (cook) 106
Broadlands Archives 368, 371
Brockman, Ronnie 262
Brooke, Gen. Sir Alan 131, 140, 146–7, 151, 172
Brooke, Ronald 282
Brooks, Ernest 34, 35
Brooks, Gen. Dallas 146
Brooks, Louise 76
Brown, Capability 339
Brown, George 307
Browne, Charlie 333
Browning, Lt-Gen. Frederick (‘Boy’) 162, 254
Brudenell, Edwina (née Hicks) (granddaughter) 287, 341
Bryans, Robin 359–60
Bryant, Arthur 285
Bryce family 93, 289
Bubbles (dog) 21
Bulganin, Nikolai 274
Bun (toy rabbit) 55
Burdwan, Henry 269
Burkes Peerage 351
Burma Campaign 158, 174
Burma Star Association 318
Butler, R.A. (‘Rab’) 191
Cabinet Mission Plan 199, 213
Cairo Conference 154
Callaghan, Jim 324
Callede, Madame 93
Campbell-Johnson, Alan 192, 215, 311, 383
Cannadine, David 375
Cap Ferrat 38
capitalism, Lord Louis questions flaws in 27–8
Carl-Gustaf, King 306
Carlton House Terrace 88
Carney, ADM Robert 264
Caroe, Sir Olaf 200, 203–4
Carreras, Jimmy 323
Carrington, Lord 341
Cartland, Barbara 298, 299, 339, 384
Carver, FM Lord 378
Cary, Sir Michael 323
Casa Maury, Bobby, Marquis de Casa
Maury (‘The Cuban Heel’) 58, 61, 66, 128, 143
Casa Maury, Paula, see Gellibrand, Paula
Casper (chameleon) 101
Cassell, Felix 299
Cassell, Marjorie 25
Cassell, Sir Ernest 15, 16, 25, 35–6, 38, 40–1, 56, 82
Castle, Barbara 324
Cattermole, Terry 283
Chamberlain, Neville 114
Channon, Henry (‘Chips’) 185, 258–9
Chaplin, Charlie 53, 98, 335, 339
Chaqueneau, Adelaide 69
Chaqueneau, Julien (‘Jack’) 69
Charles, Prince, Prince of Wales 2, 306, 309, 327–32, 343, 344, 345
Charteris, Lord 326
Chatfield, ADM Ernle 54
Chatfield, Capt. John 18
Chatfield, Sir Ernle 81
Chaudhuri, Brig. Jayanto 178–9
Checkley, Irene 280
Chenevix-Trench, Charles 214
Chiang Kai-shek, Gen. 157–8, 172, 174
Chisholm, Ann 253
>
Christie, John 190–1, 197, 206, 223
Christison, Gen. Sir Philip 169
Churchill, Lady Clementine 68
Churchill, Pamela 163
Churchill, Randolph 118, 163
Churchill, Sir Winston 1, 13, 28, 68, 102, 120, 123, 127, 129, 130, 131, 133, 137, 139, 140, 150, 151, 153, 215, 245, 256, 257, 272, 354, 372, 373, 375
Clarke, Sibilla 299
Claude, Madame 296, 297
Cockburn, Claud 106–7
COHQ 128, 130, 134, 143, 145–8, 154–5, 160, 312
Cole, A.P. 103, 117
Colette (author) 90
Collins, Elizabeth 312
Colman, Ronald 76
Colville, Sir John 204
Combined Operations 1, 127–35, 152, 192, 275, 301, 312, 316, 356, 375–6
Compston, Archie 106
Compton, Robin 300
Connell, Brian 311
Connell, John 300
Constantine, King 306, 372
Coogan, Jackie 53
Cooper, Capt. N.T.P. 148
Cooper, Diana 59, 70, 76, 106, 165
Cooper, Duff 59, 70, 106, 112, 163, 165
Coote, Johnnie 123
Courtenay, Catherine 87
Courtiour, Roger 325
Courtney, John 346
Covent Garden 29
Coward, Noél 89, 95, 103, 131–4, 155, 193, 278, 309, 349, 351, 355, 385
Crabb, CDR Lionel (‘Buster’) 274–5, 276
Cranston, Miss 25
Cravath, Paul 69
Craven, Mairi 122
Crawford, Earl of 36
Crier, Jackie 351–2
Cripps, Sir Stafford 114, 191
Cruger, Pinna 59
Cudlipp, Hugh 318–25
Cummings, A.J. 253
Cunard, Lady 28
Cunningham, ADM Sir Andrew 123, 177
Cunningham, ADM Sir John 271–2
Cunningham-Reid, Alec 67–8, 85
Cunningham-Reid, Bobby 114
Cunningham, Sir Andrew 151
Cunningham, Sir George 228
Curzon, Dick 39
D-Day 140, 142–3, 147, 376
Dabo (wallaby) 113
Dahl, Roald 289
Dalton, Hugh 128
Daly, Anthony 357–8
David, Prince of Wales, see Edward VIII
Davidson, Randal, Archbishop of Canterbury 40
Davies, Marion 76
Davies, Nicholas 352
Davis, ADM Sir William 275
Davis, Deering 63
Dawson of Penn, Lord 77
De Pass, Philippa 296
De Pass, Robert 296
The Mountbattens Page 42