YOU King Charles III - Commemorative edition
DEAR UNCLE DICKIE
Charles was closer to his great-uncle than he was to his father and he was devastated when his beloved mentor was murdered
LORD Louis Mountbatten was tall, charismatic and dashing, a decorated World War 2 hero, a gifted storyteller and a natural leader who drew people like magnets.
Yet it was young Charles, sensitive, awkward, shy, unsure of his place in the world and fearful of his formidable father, who loved him the most.
Uncle Dickie, as everyone in the family called him, became the father figure Charles would’ve liked Prince Philip to be. It was Dickie to whom he turned when he needed advice and Dickie to whom he listened when he stepped out of line.
Dickie was related to Charles in more ways than one. He was the great-grandson of Queen Victoria and a second cousin to Charles’ mother, Queen Elizabeth.
He was also the older brother of Philip’s mother, Princess Alice of Greece and Denmark – and if it hadn’t been for Dickie, Charles might never have been born.
It was he who arranged the first meeting between Philip and Elizabeth in 1939, setting in motion their future engagement and the trajectory of the royal family. Dickie was delighted when, nine years later, Charles was born.
AN ADORED UNCLE
Charles’ earliest memory of
Dickie is from when he was about five years old, watching his great-uncle lead the British Mediterranean naval fleet on a manoeuvre past the queen’s royal yacht,
Britannica, as she arrived in Malta.
It was a showy occasion full of military pomp and precision and Charles recalls being transfixed by his great-uncle’s authority and confidence.
Yet despite his standing in society and the status in the royal family, Dickie was neither arrogant nor aloof. He was a natural with Charles and his sister, Princess Anne, slipping easily into the role of grandfather after King George VI died in 1952.
Dickie was fond of his great-nephew and -niece. He played with them and never tired of recounting his wartime adventures. Charles was drawn to his infectious enthusiasm. The young prince was a regular
visitor to Broadlands, the Hampshire home of Dickie and his wife, Edwina.
Even though Dickie was said to be a great deal like Philip, Charles found his great-uncle much easier to talk to and he quickly became a mentor to the future king.
But this in turn shifted the dynamic of Philip and Dickie’s relationship, creating tension between the two men.
“Philip felt he’d lost his uncle to Charles,” a royal aide says. He also felt that Charles hardly needed a father figure as “he already had one”.
But Dickie gave Charles something his father didn’t: patience, kindness and a guiding hand.
Howard Hodgson, author of Charles: The Man Who Will Be King, says it was thanks to Dickie that Charles was set up for the future.
“He’d go on to be England’s most dedicated and hard-working Prince of Wales ever,” he wrote. “Armed with a sense of duty, compassion for his future subjects and the need to do good, he overcame much of his childhood shyness.”
ROYAL CONFIDANT
With his mother occupied with the business of being monarch and his strained relationship with his father, Charles grew closer and closer to Dickie, especially after he retired in the ’60s.
Charles trusted his great-uncle’s wisdom, accepted his criticism and loved spending time with him at Broadlands, where they’d fish and talk long into the night about history and the dynamics of the royal family.
When Elizabeth discussed with her advisors the course of Charles’ tertiary education, it was Dickie’s suggestion that was followed. “Trinity College [at Cambridge] like his grandfather, [royal naval college] Dartmouth like his father and grandfather, and then to sea in the Royal Navy, ending up with a command of his own,” he said.
When Charles graduated from Dartmouth in 1971, Dickie was his only relative to attend the ceremony.
Dickie didn’t hesitate to play the role of disciplinarian either. He wasn’t shy about dropping the name of the previous Prince of Wales, King Edward VIII – who’d abdicated the throne in 1936 to marry American divorcée Wallis Simpson – as a threat to keep the young prince in line.
When Charles once tried to get
out of an Easter weekend get-together with the royal family, his great-uncle tore into him.
“How unkind and thoughtless – so typical of how your Uncle David started,” he wrote in a letter to Charles (Edward was known as David, his seventh name, before his brief stint as monarch).
“I spent the night worrying whether you’d continue on your Uncle David’s sad course.”
Had the criticism come from Philip, it would’ve chafed at Charles – but it only served to bring the prince closer to his Uncle Dickie.
DEATH ON THE WATER
Dickie spent many summers at his holiday home of Classiebawn Castle in County Sligo, Ireland, and loved going on family fishing expeditions on his boat, Shadow V.
On 27 August 1979 he did just that, taking his eldest daughter, Patricia, and her husband, John Knatchbull, their 14-yearold twin sons, Nicholas and Timothy, John’s mother, Doreen, and 15-year-old boat hand Paul Maxwell out on the water with him.
Then horror unfolded – the boat was blown to pieces by an Irish Republican Army (IRA) bomb that had been smuggled on board.
Dickie (79) was killed instantly, as were Nicholas and Paul. Doreen (83) was critically injured and died the next day. John, Patricia and Timothy were seriously injured but miraculously survived.
The attack on the Shadow V was followed hours later by a bomb blast that killed 18 British soldiers near Warrenpoint in Northern Ireland.
The IRA claimed responsibility for the Mountbatten assassination and published a statement promising to continue the “noble struggle to drive the British intruders out of our native land”.
IRA bomb-maker Thomas McMahon was the only person arrested and convicted of carrying out the attack. He was sentenced to life in prison and released in 1998 under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, which brought an end to the conflict in Northern Ireland.
A TIME OF SORROW
Charles, who was on holiday in Iceland at the time of the blast, was devastated by Dickie’s death.
At Dickie’s funeral at London’s Westminster Abbey, Charles read Psalm 107 and later delivered a tribute to Dickie at a memorial service at St Paul’s Cathedral.
“That quality of real moral courage, of being able to face unpleasant tasks that needed to be done – and yet to be fair and consistent – is a rare quality indeed,” Charles said.
“But he had it in abundance and that, I think, is one of the reasons why people would have followed him into hell if he had explained the point of such an expedition. It’s also one of the reasons why I adored him and why so many of us miss him so dreadfully now.”
A grieving Charles then retreated to Balmoral Castle in Scotland, going on solitary walks and repeatedly watching a BBC obituary on his great-uncle.
The prince worked through his loss by taking on some of Dickie’s responsibilities,
such as the stewardship of the United World Colleges, a global network of schools and educational programmes.
In 2015 Charles returned to the site where Dickie had been assassinated and gave a conciliatory speech.
“At the time I could not imagine how we could come to terms with the anguish of such a deep loss, since for me Lord Mountbatten represented the grandfather I never had.
“Through this experience, I now understand in a profound way the agonies borne by so many others in these islands, of whatever faith, denomination or political tradition. “Let us, then, endeavour to become the subjects of our history and not its prisoners.”
After Philip’s funeral in 2021, Mary Lou
McDonald, president of Irish republican party Sinn Féin, apologised for Dickie’s killing.
“Of course I’m sorry that happened. Of course, that’s heartbreaking. My job, and I think that Prince Charles and others would absolutely appreciate this, is to lead from the front now.”
AND SO INTO THE FUTURE
In the aftermath of the tragedy, Charles turned to Dickie’s granddaughter Amanda Knatchbull for solace, royal author Lady Colin Campbell said. “They huddled together to console each other.”
But the romance was over – and after a while another woman stepped into the picture.
Lady Diana Spencer followed the news of Dickie’s death and its effect on the royal family and was deeply moved.
A year after the funeral, she told Charles, “You looked so sad when you walked up the aisle at Mountbatten’s funeral. It was the most tragic thing I’ve ever seen. My heart bled for you. I thought, ‘You’re so lonely – you should be with somebody to look after you’.”
In an audiotape used in the 2017 documentary Diana in Her Own Words, Diana said Charles had “leapt on” her after she said that.
Dickie’s influence lived on even in that respect. If it hadn’t been for his death and Diana’s compassion towards Charles, they might never have got together. And the world of the Windsors would’ve been a very different place.