While Edwina had access to every luxury in the world, her childhood lacked the love and warmth of family life. Like Dickie, Edwina too, came from a rich and wealthy background but the similarities ended there. Having the freedom to do or say as he pleased, many believe his cosseted and overindulged childhood had a huge influence on shaping his character. The youngest child of a tight-knit loving family, ‘Dickie’ as he was affectionately called, lived the quintessential aristocratic life.

This compelled Lowney to launch several campaigns attempting to access personal diaries and letters belonging to the couple, and bringing them into the public domain.Ĭolonial rule in India or the Raj, with a primary focus on certain influential individuals, forms an extensive part of our country’s history, and not many individuals had as much of an aura about them or were possibly more influential than the Mountbattens. With much red tape and the suppression of available evidence, obtaining files of this nature proved to be a Herculean task.

In an attempt to provide a more holistic insight to the Mountbattens, Lownie accessed numerous archives and filed a number of Freedom of Information requests. As I watched Andrew Lownie, author of the biography The Mountbattens: Their Lives and Love talk to Narayani Basu about his critically acclaimed book at a session of the Jaipur Literature Festival 2022, I was drawn to find out more about the unique dynamism between the couple their tumultuous lives and very public love affairs over the decades. Attended by more than 8,000 guests, including the senior members of the British Royal family, the Mountbatten’s were the ‘It’ couple of their time.

In the summer of 1922, St Margarets, Westminster played host to what was dubbed the wedding of the year.

The mountbattens andrew lownie