Survivor of IRA bomb that killed her father
Born: February 14 1924;
Died: June 13 2017
THE Countess of Mountbatten, who has died aged 93, inherited her title when her father, the first Earl, was murdered by an IRA bomb that also killed one of her sons, and by which she and her husband were seriously injured.
Patricia Mountbatten spent weeks in hospital, initially in intensive care, and many more months in a wheelchair and on crutches; the psychological trauma of her ordeal persisted for years. But she made charitable work a part of her recovery, and took on numerous roles, notably with the Red Cross, the NSPCC and The Compassionate Friends, a charity for bereaved parents.
The Mountbatten family was closely connected with the Royal family. The first Earl Mountbatten of Burma was the uncle of Prince Philip; his father, formerly Prince Louis of Battenberg, became First Sea Lord and later the first Marquess of Milford Haven after renouncing his Austrian and German citizenship at the start of the Great War.
His second son Lieutenant Lord Louis Mountbatten displayed a genius for networking (though he had strong cards to begin with). Having started as a Lieutenant in the Royal Navy towards the end of the First World War, he ended the Second World War as Supreme Commander, South East Asia, then First Sea Lord, and became the last Viceroy, and first Governor-General, of India.
Patricia Edwina Victoria Mountbatten was born on Valentine’s Day 1924 in London, when her father was still Lieutenant Lord Louis Mountbatten, and christened at the Chapel Royal in St James’s Palace. The then Prince of Wales (later Edward VIII) was her godfather. Much of her childhood was spent on Malta, where her father was often stationed, though she also attended schools in England and lived for a time in Budapest. Patricia and her sister Pamela saw little of their mother Edwina, an ardent socialite, but were both very close to their father.
On the outbreak of war Edwina took the girls to live in New York, but Patricia returned in 1943, when she turned 18, in order to serve with the Women’s Royal Naval Service (the Wrens) in signals. She was eventually posted to South East Asia, where her father was supreme commander of the Allied forces, and where she met John Knatchbull, the 7th Lord Brabourne and a Guards officer who was serving as ADC to Mountbatten.
They married in Kent in 1946, with the Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret acting as bridesmaids. Lord Brabourne went into film production, working on pictures which included Sink the Bismarck! (1959), A Passage to India (1984) and a string of films based on Agatha Christie’s novels; he later became chairman of Thames Television.
The couple had five sons and two daughters (and one stillborn son). On the August bank holiday in 1979 on which they went on a boat trip off Sligo with the first Earl, the Brabournes were accompanied by their twin sons Nicholas and Timothy, then 14, by Patricia’s mother-in-law, the Dowager Lady Brabourne, and a 15-year-old boat boy from Enniskillen called Paul Maxwell.
The bomb, detonated by remote control, killed Lord Mountbatten, Nicholas and Paul immediately; the Dowager Lady Brabourne died the following day. Lord Brabourne, his wife and Timothy were very seriously injured. In 1995, Countess Mountbatten returned to Ireland for the first time since the attack with her godson, the Prince of Wales, and she later voiced her approval of the Queen’s meeting with Martin McGuinness in 2012 and the IRA’s moves to abandon violence.
After a long period of recovery, during which she was initially confined to a wheelchair (as was her husband), Lady Mountbatten became deeply involved in charitable work, lending her influence to numerous groups. She served as chairman of the Sir Edward Cassell Educational Trust and the Edwina Mountbatten Trust set up in memory of her mother; she was president of SOS Children’s Villages UK, Friends of Cassel Hospital, and William Harvey Hospital, Shaftesbury Homes and the Kent branches of Relate, Save the Children and the NSPCC.
She was a vice-president of many other charities, including the National Childbirth Trust, The National Society for Cancer Relief, the Royal College of Nursing and the Royal National College for the Blind. In addition to those duties she was colonel-in-chief of Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, a magistrate and, from 1984 until 2000, a Vice Lord-Lieutenant for Kent. In 1991 she was appointed CBE for her work with the Red Cross.
She inherited her title after her father’s murder because a special remainder had been attached on the earldom’s creation allowing it to pass through the female line for one generation. As a result, Patricia Mountbatten also sat in the House of Lords until the removal of (most) hereditary peers in 1999. Her husband died in 2005, and she is survived by her four remaining sons and two daughters; her eldest son, the former Lord Romsey and currently 8th Lord Brabourne, now succeeds to the earldom.
ANDREW MCKIE
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