Monday 8 August 2022 02:19 AM CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews the weekend's TV: Hot sex scandal at heart of ... trends now
India 1947: Partition in Colour
Rating: 
Van Der Valk
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The messiest divorce in history, between India and Pakistan, caused countless thousands of deaths — and created two future nuclear superpowers.
One major trigger for the deadly break-up, as in so many divorces, was extramarital sex. And the lurid history India 1947: Partition In Colour (C4) makes an even more sensational claim. It paints Lady Edwina Mountbatten, great-aunt of Prince Charles, as a woman whose rampant sex drive changed the map of the world.
Her red-hot affair with the most powerful man in India wrecked any hope of keeping the country united following independence from the British Empire. The wife of the Viceroy of India, Louis Mountbatten, and her lover, Congress leader Pandit Nehru, were sleeping together within days of their first meeting. She was 45, he was 57.
This two-part documentary hinted heavily that Mountbatten not only knew about the affair but took an active part in it. His biographer, Andrew Lownie, pointed to a photo of the trio in an open-top sports car, as though they’d been snapped in bed together, ‘almost like some kind of threesome’.
This two-part documentary hinted heavily that Mountbatten not only knew about the affair but took an active part in it. His biographer, Andrew Lownie (pictured), pointed to a photo of the trio in an open-top sports car, as though they’d been snapped in bed together, ‘almost like some kind of threesome’
Nehru made no effort to disguise his closeness to the couple — enraging his great political rival, the leader of the Muslim League, Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Partition’s causes, its heroes and villains, are still hugely contentious. This version lays the majority of the blame on Nehru and his
