ON February 13, 1947, Lord Wavell, then Viceroy of India, received a telegram from the Prime Minister of England telling him that he had lost his job. The Labour Government in London had chosen Lord Mountbatten as his successor. That evening, Wavell wrote in his diary that Mountbatten was "an unexpected but a clever one from their (the Government's) point of view; and Dickie's personality may perhaps accomplish what I failed to do".
This was a comment that was as perceptive as it was generous. The Field Marshal and the Rear-Admiral were indeed very different kinds of men; one withdrawn, a connoisseur of poetry, choosing to keep his own counsel and his own company; the other flamboyant and dashing, a bon vivant and socialite who would much rather be seen with a glass of wine than a book in hand.
The journalist Pothan Joseph once remarked that Mountbatten tended to act as his "own Public Relations Officer". He was a pioneer in what we now call "spin" and "image management". Few men have taken so much interest in how history would judge them. In books written under his or his family's supervision, a considerably glorified picture was presented of what he was said to have done in and for India. It was claimed that without Mountbatten, freedom would not have come so soon; and that it would have come at a much higher cost. It was claimed that only Mountbatten could have got the Congress and the Muslim League to come to terms; and that only he could have got Jawaharlal Nehru and Vallabhbhai Patel to work together.
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