'Dickie, you're so crooked that if you swallowed a nail you'd shit a corkscrew!' Thus the irascible Field Marshal Sir Gerald Templer, in a 'Templerism' openly addressed to Lord Louis Mountbatten. It is one of Philip Ziegler's virtues as an official biographer that he is willing to quote the unkind as well as the kind remarks about his hero. Another is his readability: a seven-hundred-page opus that crackles with interest, intelligence and good judgment from the beginning of Mountbatten's meteoric appearance in the 20th century to his end as a victim of the IRA; the portrait of a man who, born a royal German prince, was reduced to the courtesy title of Lord and, by a mixture of talent, industry and naked ambition, seared his way into naval, military and finally political history - as well as the longest entry in Britain's Who's Who.

LRB 21 March 1985 | PDF Download