Cheap Lord Mountbatten - The Last Viceroy (DVD) (Tom Clegg) Price

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Grand Historical Epic
Lord Mountbatten: The Last Viceroy, is a history of the final tumultuous weeks of the British Raj. In the post World War II period maintaining control of India was no longer practical for Britain, and the Labour Government agreed to negotiate independence for the subcontinent, which was seething with discontent and religious and ethnic strife. <
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>Lord Louis Mountbatten, great-grandson of Queen Victoria and second cousin of King George VI, was chosen as the last Viceroy. Lord Louis and his wife Edwina Ashley had been glittering members of London Society since the 1920s. During World War II they both revealed hitherto unsuspected depth, Lord Louis as one of the principal Allied naval leaders in the war against Japan, and Edwina in dealing with the catastrophic health and relief efforts caused by the conflict. <
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>This 6 part series is a good depiction of the enormous problems India faced in 1946-1948 and of the Mountbattens' attempt to deal with them. The rioting and massacre scenes are intense, leaving little to the imagination. Mahatma Gandhi is well acted, but Nehru and Jinnah tend to come off less well, primarily because the series focuses so much on Mountbatten and his British assistants. Edwina, admirably played by Janet Suzman, is really the heroine of the series as she attempts to alleviate the sufferings of the millions of Hindus and Muslims. Her relationship with Nehru, which has been the subject of intense speculation and gossip over the years, is left up in the air, and different viewers will come to different conclusions as to how physical it became. <
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>This series does a good job explaining the decolonization process from a Eurocentric point of view. Just be aware that Nehru and Jinnah would seem far more active and positive protagonists were six part series filmed depicting their roles in the ending of the Raj.

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A splendid mini-series!
This was an outstanding mini-series. I only wish that it had been longer. Great casting! A top notch production!

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The Tragedy and Panorama of India's Independence
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>Mountbatten was described by a historian as man whose <
>"immense vanity and hunger for publicity and power, coupled <
>with his vaulting ambition and propensity for realigning the <
>truth were narrowly outweighed by his colossal energy and charm". All of this is portrayed brilliantly by Nicole Williamson in this superb production about Mountbatten's terms as last Viceroy of India as well as its first Governor-General. <
>However, this series does not only focus on Mountbatten but shows the political and religious forces at work that brought about both India's independence, but also the savage violence that accompanied the partition of the sub-continent and the legacy of hate and religious fanaticism that now threaten not only the successor states, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, but possibly the entire world due to their nuclear arsenals. <
>The series also features excellent performances by Janet Suzman as Lady Edwina Mountbatten who was one of the great "do-gooders" of history, Vladek Sheybal as the enigmatic,iron-willed, tubercular Mohammed Ali Jinnah, and especially Sam Dastor as Gandhi whose portrayal of him is far superior to that of Ben Kingsley in the film "Gandhi". <
>One drawback of the series is that it is based heavily on the memoirs of Mountbatten and his assistant Alan Campbell-Johnson who were clearly biased against Jinnah and fans of Nehru and Gandhi, blaming the partition of India solely on Jinnah's "stubborness". Other historians have a more nuanced view of the Indian leaders pointing out that Jinnah did accept the idea of a united India under a loose Federal system and that it was Nehru and Gandhi's Congress Party that rejected it giving Jinnah no alternative but to seek total separation for India's Muslims. Similarly, Jinnah is portrayed as responsible for the war in Kashmir, whereas according to the rules that defined the partition, the majority religious group should have been able to choose which successor state they associated with, but Kashmir's majority Muslims were never given this opportunity becuase Nehru, being a Kashmiri himself, was insistent on taking Kashmir for India. <
>None of this detracts, however, from the sheer pleasure of seeing this vast panorama portrayed on the television. Anyone interested in great historical events or personages will enjoy this series.