Volume 32, Number 8 · May 9, 1985
Masterpiece Theatre
By David Cannadine
Mountbatten
by Philip Ziegler
Knopf, 784 pp., $24.95
Admiral of the Fleet the Earl Mountbatten of Burma was the most honored Englishman of his generation. By the time the IRA assassinated him in August 1979, he had amassed a collection of titles and decorations, orders and medals, so extensive that when he wore them on full-dress, ceremonial occasions, he looked more like a Ruritanian relic than a man who had done the state some service well into the age of the atomic bomb and the Polaris submarine. To most foreign observers, and even to some natives, the British honors system is an ancien régime anachronism of incomprehensible complexity and questionable worth. But to Mountbatten, it was the stuff of life. While most British politicans, civil servants, and military men reluctantly settle for an occasional decoration, Mountbatten collected his titles and orders as a philatelist collects stamps—remorselessly, single-mindedly, and voraciously. 'In honor bound' was not just his family motto: it was also the direction of his life's ambition, and the summation of his life's achievements.
Review, 3405 words
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