SMITH, Adrian

The Mountbattens – a ‘golden couple’ in search of power and respectability

 

In Britain the interwar period saw a fascination with aristocratic members of ‘High Society’ akin to the popular press’s present obsession with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, their relatives and friends.  The then Prince of Wales’ preference for married women saw discreet and deferential society correspondents portray him as a fetching, eligible, and yet solitary figure – only after the Abdication did sympathetic coverage of the former king depict him as one half of a glamorous couple.  Attention focused therefore upon (relatively) young married members of the English upper classes, with Duff and Lady Diana Cooper the foremost celebrities in the early 1920s, not least because they shared good looks and good luck, whether at Westminster or in the West End.  In succeeding years Lady Diana’s career on stage gently waned, and Duff was for ever in the shadow of another handsome survivor of the Great War, Anthony Eden.  More lasting celebrity was enjoyed by another ‘golden couple’, the Mountbattens, closely associated with the heir to the throne but enjoying (with some justification) a racy image; whether at home or in Malta when Dickie was serving with the Mediterranean Fleet.  The adulterous Edwina courted controversy throughout the interwar years, her behaviour contrasting sharply with the family-orientated Duchess of York and eventual queen.  Respectability came late, Lady Mountbatten’s rapid promotion within the wartime St John Ambulance paralleling her husband’s fast-track elevation to senior command.  Arrival at India’s Viceregal Lodge in 1947 sealed the Mountbattens’ transformation from gossip column fodder to symbols of power and prestige.  How did this come about, and how had the Royal Navy’s rising star so successfully combined pleasure and privilege with driving ambition and a keen sense of professionalism?

 

Adrian Smith is Professor of History at the University of Southampton.