Mountbatten biographer says Government has spied on him during his £450,000 battle to see personal diary of royal who inspired King Charles and ‘had perversion for young boys’
- Andrew Lownie says the Cabinet Office kept tabs on his talks and social media
Lord Mounbatten’s biographer has claimed the British Government spied on him during his £450,000 legal battle to release the royal’s secret diaries.
Andrew Lownie says he has uncovered Cabinet Office documents on him which indicate officials had been tasked with monitoring his social media accounts and public appearances in an effort to try and ‘smear’ him.
It comes after the historian’s explosive discovery in 2019 of a secret wartime FBI dossier on Lord Mountbatten, which accused the Earl of being a paedophile who allegedly had a ‘homosexual with a lusting for young boys’.
Dr Lownie, the author of The Mountbattens: their Lives & Loves, claimed when he requested the FBI release other files held on Mountbatten, he was told they had been destroyed ‘after you asked for them’, in a move he says had been ‘clearly’ carried out at the ‘request of the British Government’.
Speaking about his latest claim the Cabinet Office had been spying on him, he told The Guardian: ‘The inference was that this information might be useful to smear me. My crime? I’m an historian who pushes back against the censoring of our history by the government and highlights its failures to adhere to public records acts and the Freedom of Information Act.’
Lord Mountbatten’s biographer claims the British Government spied on him during his costly legal fight to release the personal diaries of the earl, who was assassinated by the IRA in 1979
Dr Lownie gained the documents by issuing a subject access request, which gives people the power to demand organisations to reveal what personal information it holds on them.
In the historian’s case, it meant a wealth of correspondence was revealed which reportedly showed how the government had attempted to keep tabs on him.
The Government denies spying on the biographer. But Dr Lownie said the documents he had received showed both the Cabinet Office and Foreign Office had been monitoring his social media accounts.
Andrew Lownie is the author of The Mountbattens: their Lives & Loves. Photo: CC BY-SA 4.0
He also claimed the Government had a flyer for a talk he gave at a private club, details of a lecture he was giving at a Cambridge alumni weekend and a library talk with an internal heading by the Cabinet Office of ‘Not just any cook-along this week’.
‘The Cabinet Office eventually admitted that it held so much material on me collected over the past five years – it estimated it would take more than 650 hours to collect the information – that my requests needed to be broken down into six-monthly periods,’ he said.
The historian added documents – which included newspaper articles and crowdfunding activities were ‘brought to the attention of Alex Chisholm’, the permanent secretary of the Cabinet Office.
Hitting back, a Government spokesman told the Guardian there was ‘no basis to these claims’.
Earl Mountbatten, who was assassinated by the IRA in 1979, served as head of the Royal Navy and had been Viceroy of India when the country became independent from Britain in 1947.
He was a well-known figure in Britain thanks to his close relationship with the Queen, Prince Philip. He was also an inspirational figure for King Charles, when he was the Prince of Wales.
Lord Mountbatten was said to have been an inspirational figure for a young King Charles, when he was the Prince of Wales (the pair are pictured together in July 1968 watching the Grand Prix at Brands Hatch)
Lord Mountbatten, pictured left, with the his wife Edwina, right, and the Prime Minister of India Jawaharlal Nehru in 1948
Dr Lownie says he has spent £450,000 in legal fees in his effort to force the release of papers contained in the vast Broadlands archive – which contains 4,500 boxed of official documents containing letters from Queen Victoria to Lord Palmerston, the diaries of the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, and the Mountbattens’ papers.
READ MORE: ANDREW LOWNIE: From Wallis Simpson’s affair with a car salesman to the FBI’s Mountbatten probe, our Royal Family and the government are colluding to destroy Royal records and falsify the past. Why DO we let them?
The archive of historic documents was bought by the University of Southampton for £2.8million to preserve it for the nation – with a view of allowing the public to view the records.
Instead, the university blocked the release of the diaries and correspondence from the Mountbattens which covered historical events from the abdication of Edward VIII to the independence of India. It followed advice from the Cabinet Office.
Dr Lownie spent five years fighting to win unrestricted access to the documents as he researched a book about Mountbatten and his wife Edwina, the last Viceroy and Vicereine of India.
Last month, a Freedom of Information request revealed the Government has spent more than £180,000 of taxpayers’ money fighting its ‘needless’ legal battle to keep the diaries under lock and key.
The FBI file on him, which emerged in 2019, also claimed that his alleged penchant for young men made him ‘an unfit man to direct any sort of military operations’.
The file was obtained after a freedom of information request by Dr Lownie.
Agents began compiling the document in February 1944, shortly after Mountbatten became supreme allied commander of southeast Asia.
Following his appointment, the FBI interviewed Elizabeth de la Poer Beresford, Baroness Decies, about another matter, and she brought up Mountbatten.
Earl Mountbatten, pictured with his wife Edwina, was assassinated by the IRA in 1979. He served as head of the Royal Navy and had been Viceroy of India when the country became independent from Britain in 1947.
Lord Mountbatten and his wife Edwina prepare to leave Northolt for India in 1947
The then Prince Charles with Lord Mountbatten in Windsor in the 1970s
The file read: ‘She states that in these circles Lord Louis Mountbatten and his wife are considered persons of extremely low morals.
READ MORE: US authorities destroyed dossiers on Lord Mountbatten at the request of the British Government after discovery of wartime FBI file accusing aristocrat of having a ‘perversion for young boys’, historian claims
‘She stated that Lord Louis Mountbatten was known to be a homosexual with a perversion for young boys.
‘In Lady Decies’ opinion he is an unfit man to direct any sort of military operations because of this condition.
‘She stated further that his wife Lady Mountbatten was considered equally erratic.’
The document was signed by EE Conroy, head of the FBI’s New York field office, who wrote that she ‘appears to have no special motive in making the above statements’.
Dr Lownie says in his article for MailOnline: ‘After I discovered a wartime FBI file which claimed Mountbatten was “a homosexual with a perversion for young boys”, I requested other listed files held on him, only to be told they had been destroyed.
‘When I asked when that destruction had taken place, the American authorities candidly admitted, “After you had asked for them”.
‘Clearly this had been at the request of the British Government, previously unaware that such damaging material existed.’
The Cabinet Office previously declined to comment about the historian’s claims. The FBI was approached for comment.
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