John Terraine THE LIFE AND TIMES OF LORD MOUNTBATTEN Signed Hardback
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John Terraine THE LIFE AND TIMES OF LORD MOUNTBATTEN Signed Hardback
First edition, third impression hardback of THE LIFE AND TIMES OF LORD MOUNTBATTEN: An Illustrated Biography Based on the Television History by John Terraine with a foreword by Lord Mountbatten and published by Hutchinson & Co (Publishers) Ltd, London in January 1969. Signed by Lord Mountbatten on the half title page. A printed compliment slip with Lord Mountbatten's personal crest on top is loosely inserted: 'With the compliments of Admiral of the Fleet Earl Mountbatten of Burma - Broadlands Romsey Hants'.
The book is in pretty good condition (Clean dark blue cloth boards with gilt lettering on spine which has light rubbing and creasing to spine edges) with a bit of wear to the illustrated first state dust jacket which is price clipped (minor creasing to the edges, slight rubbing to corners, light moisture staining to the top and bottom front corners). Internally, the pages are clean and tight and there are no tears and no other inscriptions. There is some age spotting to the top page edges.
Admiral of the Fleet Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma KG, GCB, OM, GCSI, GCIE, GCVO, DSO, PC, FRS (born Prince Louis of Battenberg; 1900 – 1979) was a British statesman and naval officer, an uncle of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, and second cousin once removed to Elizabeth II.
During the Second World War, he was Supreme Allied Commander South East Asia Command (1943–46). He was the last Viceroy of India (1947) and the first Governor-General of the independent Dominion of India (1947–48), from which the modern Republic of India was to emerge in 1950.
From 1954 until 1959 he was First Sea Lord, a position that had been held by his father, Prince Louis of Battenberg, some forty years earlier. Thereafter he served as Chief of the Defence Staff until 1965, making him the longest serving professional head of the British Armed Forces to date. During this period Mountbatten also served as Chairman of the NATO Military Committee for a year.
In 1979, Mountbatten, his grandson Nicholas, and two others were killed by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), who had placed a bomb in his fishing boat, in Ireland.
In 1969 Earl Mountbatten participated in a 12-part autobiographical television series Lord Mountbatten: A Man for the Century, also known as The Life and Times of Lord Mountbatten, produced by Associated-Rediffusion and scripted by historian John Terraine. This extraordinary volume spans 70 years of triumph, conflict and glory in the life of this remarkable man who rose to worldwide recognition as both statesman and military hero.
John Terraine was born on the 15th January 1921 and is remembered as a leading British military historian. He is best known for his persistent defence of Douglas Haig and also as the lead screenwriter on the BBC's landmark 1960s documentary The Great War.
Terraine was educated at Stamford School and at Keble College, Oxford. After leaving Oxford, in 1943, he joined BBC radio and continued to work for the BBC for 18 years, latterly as its Pacific and South African Programme Organiser.
He was a member of the Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies and was awarded the Institute's Chesney Gold Medal in 1982. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 1987.
"Both in his career and his private life, Earl Mountbatten has stood at the centre of the great events, in which his country has been involved during the present century. He was born in 1900, the great-grandson of Queen Victoria and closely related to almost every reigning house in Europe.
Following in the naval footsteps of his father, he joined Admiral Beatty's flagship, H.M.S. Lion, as a midshipman only six weeks after the Battle of Jutland and, like his father, rose steadily to the top of his profession.
Between the wars, he accompanied the then Prince of Wales on two Commonwealth tours, and his wedding to the beautiful Edwina Ashley was one of the most brilliant social events of the 1920s. The place they occupied at the centre of English society did not interfere with his progress as a professional naval officer.
By the time the 1939 war broke out, he was in command of a destroyer flotilla. His own ship, H.M.S. Kelly, was sunk under him. He commanded the aircraft carrier, Illustrious, he became Chief of Combined Operations, and finally he was appointed Supreme Allied Commander, South East Asia.
At the end of the war, he wanted to get back to the navy but returned instead to Asia - this time as Victory of India, He was to be the last, for it was his task to negotiate the difficult path to Indian independence - a task he carried out with such tact and good feeling on all sides that he was invited by the Indians themselves to be their first Governor General after Independence.
It was not until 1948 that he was able to return to his naval career as Rear Admiral Commanding the First Cruiser Squadron. In 1952 he became British and NATO.-in-C., Mediterranean. He crowned his career with the post his father had held, that of First Sea Lord, and retired from active service in 1965 as Chief of the Defence Staff.
When Mountbatten was born, his great-grandmother was on the throne. Now Britain has a Queen again, and his nephew is her consort. But state occasions play only a relatively minor role in this volume, which is a great canvas of British history in the first sixty-eight years of the century.
In spite of his glittering career, Lord Mountbatten has consistently declined to write his autobiography and has let it be known that no authorised biography based upon his papers may be published until after his death. He has, however, agreed to take part personally in a television history devoted to his life and times, and it seems only logical that there should be a book using the same material.
This volume - most of it in the first person and containing 64 pages of photographs, many of them from the family albums - is the result. The narrative sections have been written by John Terraine, the distinguished military historian, author of Douglas Haig: The Educated Soldier, as well as of the television history of the life and times of Lord Mountbatten."
202 pages. Illustrated with sixty four pages of black & white photographs.
ISBN: 09 088810 3
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John Terraine THE LIFE AND TIMES OF LORD MOUNTBATTEN Signed Hardback