Lord Mountbatten

Last Viceroy of India and mentor to King Charles III

He served as Supreme Allied Commander, South East Asia Command, and later as the last Viceroy of India.^[1][2] His naval career included command of the 5th Destroyer Flotilla and service as First Sea Lord.^[3][4] At Frogmore House in Windsor, Berkshire, on 25 June 1900, the individual later known as Lord Mountbatten was born, then styled Prince Louis of Battenberg.^[5]

Last updated 2026-09-30 from the source article.

Quick Facts

Born: 25 June 1900, Frogmore House, Windsor, Berkshire
Died: 27 August 1979, Mullaghmore, County Sligo (assassinated by the Provisional Irish Republican Army)
Field: Naval officer, statesman
Nationality: British

Facts from the source article.

Life and work

He was baptised on 17 July 1900 by the Dean of Windsor, wearing the original 1841 royal christening gown.^[6] He was posted as midshipman to the battlecruiser in July 1916 at age 16.^[7] Mountbatten attended Christ's College, Cambridge for two terms from October 1919, studying English literature.^[8] He was appointed Chief of Combined Operations Headquarters in October 1941, where he devised technical aids for opposed landings.^[9]

As Supreme Allied Commander, his command oversaw the recapture of Burma from the Japanese.^[10] He was assassinated in 1979, and Japan was not invited to his funeral in accordance with his will.^[11] Prince Louis of Battenberg and Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine had Mountbatten as their youngest child and second son.^[5] Because of World War I, which from 1914 to 1918 pitted Britain and its allies against the Central Powers led by the German Empire, Mountbatten's father adopted the surname Mountbatten, an anglicised version of Battenberg, following King George V's 1917 royal proclamation that changed the British royal house's name to Windsor.^[12]

On 15 August 1947, at the request of Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Mountbatten assumed the role of the first Governor-General of independent India.^[13]

What the cited sources add

A 2006 BBC documentary alleged that Mountbatten was involved in a plot to oust Prime Minister Harold Wilson during his second term.^[14] Wilson believed Mountbatten would be installed as an interim prime minister following a military coup.^[14] The documentary was based on meetings secretly recorded in 1976 by journalists Barrie Penrose and Roger Courtiour.^[14] Former military figures were building private armies, angry at the extent of union control.^[14]

Wilson strongly denied claims that he was a communist sympathiser.^[15]

References

Wikipedia, "Lord Mountbatten" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: ; "Lt-Col James Allason", The Telegraph, 24 June 2011 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia, "Lord Mountbatten" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Ganguly, "A Chequered Brilliance: The Many Lives of V. K. Krishna Menon. By Jairam Ramesh. New Delhi: Penguin Random House India, 2019. 744 pp. : 9780670092321 (cloth).", The Journal of Asian Studies, February 2021, p. 2; .; (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia, "Lord Mountbatten" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: ; . (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia, "Lord Mountbatten" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: ; (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia, "Lord Mountbatten" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma", British Museum; (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia, "Lord Mountbatten" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Queen Victoria, "Journal Entry : Tuesday 17th July 1900", queenvictoriasjournals.org, 17 July 1900; Queen Victoria, "Journal Entry : Tuesday 17th July 1900", queenvictoriasjournals.org, 17 July 1900 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia, "Lord Mountbatten" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: .; .; (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia, "Lord Mountbatten" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: ; ; (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia, "Lord Mountbatten" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: ; ; ; (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia, "Lord Mountbatten" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: ; .; . (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia, "Lord Mountbatten" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Japan is not invited to Lord Mountbatten's Funeral", The New York Times, 5 September 1979 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia, "Lord Mountbatten" (CC BY-SA 4.0) en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia, "Lord Mountbatten" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "A New Governor-General Wins a New Kind of Empire", 8 September 1947, p. 39 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
Wheeler, "Wilson 'Plot': The Secret Tapes", BBC News, 9 March 2006. facts only, no text reused. news.bbc.co.uk
Wikipedia, "Lord Mountbatten" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Wheeler, "Wilson 'Plot': The Secret Tapes", BBC News, 9 March 2006 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org

Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article Lord Mountbatten (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.