Earl Mountbatten

Part of the background for this book reveals Jean Townsend's links to the circle that later featured in the Profumo Affair. The journalist and royal biographer Gwenn Robyns was an especially helpful source. Over a delicious vegetarian mean she served me at her Oxfordshire home, she was royally indiscreet, especially about Louis, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, last Viceroy of India, First Sea Lord, KG, GCB, OM, GCSI, GCIE, GCVO, DSO, PC, FRS. Mountbatten, who was assassinated by the IRA in 1979, had been the uncle both of Prince Philip and his aristocratic partner in erotic adventures, Milford Haven.

 

In 1975, a Daily Mirror exposé accused Mountbatten of involvement with a gay circle of Royal Life Guards. The resulting army investigation saw five Life Guards officers and thirty-six guardsmen dismissed from the regiment for "homosexual activities." Needless to say, the Earl was unscathed by the allegations, which he denied. (The allegations no doubt excited the Guards' obsessed Michael Whittaker).

 

Gwen Robyns was a close friend of Lady Pamela Carmen Louise Hicks Pamela Hicks. At one point Gwen began a biography of Lady Pamela's husband, the interior designer David Hicks, and interviewed many of his friends. She was shocked at how "after knocking back a few drinks" they detailed Hick's lurid and debauched adventures - which extended into Buckingham Palace:

He was really into mucky stuff!

 

Then Earl Mountbatten got wind of her research.

 

Gwen Robyns:

 

"Mountbatten took me to lunch at the Yacht Club. So I went, and then Mountbatten said, 'Now, you've got all these interesting tapes. I've got a chauffeur and he could take you home to get the tapes and then would you give them to me?' And I said, "No!' And he said, 'Why not?' And he said, 'Now don't be such a silly girl.' And I said, 'I'm not a silly girl.'

Gwen told him the confessions had been made in confidence. Mountbatten insisted. Gwen compromised.

I said, 'What I will do is I'll have the tapes burnt - in front of my lawyer and in front of your lawyer'. So we solemnly made a date and we went to some little office somewhere and there was a little grate, and all these tapes were burnt there and then."

 

Gwen also told me about the Hicks' marriage:

 

"And I said to Pammy once, ‘He's got a boy staying with you’ - he was eighteen and from South Africa. I said, ‘Do you know - people are talking about David being in the nightclubs with this boy at night?’ And she said: 'It doesn't interfere with me... I just go to bed and have my chocolates and things.’ And I said, 'But you must feel - there's something so degrading about the whole thing!' And she said, ‘I don't think there's anything much wrong in that.’ She said, 'My parents were far worse of course.' She said, 'Far worse! They were miles worse. We don't do anything compared to what they did!'"

 

Done