Ephraim Hardcastle

NEARLY 36 years after his great-uncle Lord Mountbatten was murdered in his lobster boat by the IRA, Prince Charles is making a pilgrimage to the scene of the atrocity. Charles and Camilla will visit Mullaghmore, County Sligo, during a fourday trip to Ireland, north and south, next month. Says a Dublin source: ‘It is at the request of the Prince. Lord Mountbatten invited him many times to his holiday home, Classiebawn Castle, but Charles was advised not to travel. Lord Louis had the same security advice but ignored it.’ LIB Dem peer Lord Carlile QC says there should be an independent review of DPP Alison Saunders’s controversial decision not to prosecute Lord Janner over child sex charges. Lord Carlile’s wife, Alison Levitt QC, failed in her bid to become DPP 18 months ago and has since left the Crown Prosecution Service. Legal sources say the couple were bitterly disappointed that she was snubbed for the job in favour of Mrs Saunders. If so, are they open to the charge of sour grapes? THE distinguished journalists who have worked for The Guardian include James Agate, Arnold Toynbee, James Cameron and Malcolm Muggeridge. But it is difficult to unearth details of the Guardian career of Berlin correspondent Carmen Mory, pictured, who covered Germany during the rise of Adolf Hitler in the 1930s. According to Sarah Helm’s new book about Ravensbruck concentration camp, Swiss-born Mory went on to become a notorious ‘supervisor’ there, nicknamed Black Angel for her ill treatment and torture of fellow inmates. At her trial in 1947 she was sentenced to death but cheated the hangman by killing herself. In the case of Mory, The Guardian seems to have adopted Basil Fawlty’s mantra: ‘Don’t mention the war.’ ROYAL biographer Andrew Morton’s new work, 17 Carnations, all about the Duke and Duchess of Windsor’s friendship with Hitler and the Nazis, says that Soviet spy Anthony Blunt recruited two informants who may have worked inside Buckingham Palace during his 27-year stint as Surveyor of the King’s Pictures. Morton’s source: former Russian ambassador to London Viktor Popov, who had privileged access to KGB archives and to Blunt’s handler. Has the Queen been told? HAVING failed to get Carol Mills installed as his House of Commons clerk, Speaker John Bercow has another chance for mischief. In 2010, he refused to appoint the rector of St Margaret’s, Westminster, as his chaplain. Instead, he appointed Rose Hudson-Wilkin, an East End vicar – the first black person, and first woman, to hold the post. She is now tipped to become the first female black bishop this year. My church source says: ‘This will allow Bercow to appoint a successor. Probably not yet the time for a Muslim chaplain, but he could challenge the convention that an Anglican should hold the post. He does like a challenge!’ TIME magazine and its stablemate People seem to exist now purely to plug celebrities. How refreshing when a big star rejects their greasy embrace. Oscarwinning actress Sandra Bullock, 50, told she had been chosen by People as ‘the world’s most beautiful woman’, says: ‘That’s ridiculous. Real beauty is quiet.’