"The Mountbattens: Their Lives & Loves" by Andrew Lownie

Andrew Lownie's 2019 book is an eye opener on the lives of two people who were very much in the public eye for most of the 20th century in Britain: Lord Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, and his wife, Edwina, Countess Mountbatten of Burma. Lownie writes about aspects of their lives which were not commonly known.

We follow Mountbatten's career in the Royal Navy from 1916 to 1947, then his tenure as the last British Viceroy of India (1947) and how he resumed his naval career till he became the First Sea Lord in 1955. Edwina, in her own right, was one of the richest women in the world. Ever since they got married in 1922, the Mountbattens were seen as a glamourous couple, members of high society and close to British Royalty. They lived at a time when the British Empire was at it peak and lived long enough to see the Empire collapse after the Second World War. As the title suggests, this book covers their marriage and the many love affairs they had in the course of a long life together.