Mountbatten: A Biography

xv, 302 pp. Illustrated with 32 pages of photographs. "Lord Louis Mountbatten was one of the most colorful figures of the twentieth century, and his tragic death in August 1979, when his converted fishing boat was blown up in Donegal Bay, made world headlines. Here is the first full-length biography of the remarkable man who was born Prince Louis of Battenberg in 1890, the son of an obscure German prince and Queen Victoria's favorite granddaughter. Brought up visiting the crowned heads of Europe, to most of whom he was related, he lost his title at seventeen when his father became a British subject and changed the family name to Mountbatten. At twenty-two he married an heiress and became a leader in British and American jazz-age society during the 1920s. He was a hero in the early years of World War II, was made Supreme Allied Commander in Southeast Asia after the United States entered the war, and subsequently negotiatied Indian independence as the last British Viceroy of India. Until his retirement he was Briain's First Sea Lord."