Mountbatten unbowed
From Andrew Roberts Sir: John Osman writes (Letters, 4 September) that in 1965 Lord Mountbatten had said to him. 'I fucked it up' when talking about the partition of India, and implies that he should be admired for his honesty.
Yet by the 1970s, when the 12-part television series The Life and Times of Lord Mountbatten was broadcast, Mountbatten stated at the end of the concluding programme, 'All I want to know is was I right, were they wrong? Will they eventually come round to see it? Or are they so dumb that it will have to be their children or grandchildren who will perhaps see this series of films in 50 years' time and see that I was fairly reasonable and the people who thought I was wrong were the ones who were unreasonable?'
Far from being apologetic, Mountbatten was unrepentant to the last.
Andrew Roberts
London SW3
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