11th-13th July, 2004
Avenue Campus
Lecture Theatre C

Earl Mountbatten of Burma (1900-79) was perhaps the last great court politician of modern Europe. For over thirty years he played a major role in British global strategy and domestic statecraft, leaving his mark on matters as diverse as the partition of India, defence policy in the Cold War, the development of atomic weapons, and immigration from the Commonwealth. At the same time he occupied a unique place in British political culture in the middle decades of the twentieth century as unofficial Cabinet adviser, imperial trouble-shooter, eminence grise to the Windsors, and the lynchpin of what was left of the royal families of Europe. A remnant of the feudal past, he nonetheless made a decisive impact on modernity, in a manner which suggests that reports of the waning of the power of the crown are premature. Twenty-five years after his death, what can Mountbatten’s life and times tell us about the place of constitutional monarchy in modern Europe?

Programme
Sunday 11th July
2.30: Conference registration and coffee
4.00-6.00: Session 1: Dynasty*
(chair: Miles Taylor, Southampton)

Roderick McLean (Scottish Executive), The House of Hesse and Anglo-German diplomacy before 1914
Antony Best (LSE), A Royal Alliance: Court Diplomacy in Anglo-Japanese Relations, 1900-41
Kara Smith (Alabama), Elizabeth and Edwina: Perceptions of Royal Women, 1936-1945

7.00:dinner
8.00:Plenary lecture 1: Hugo Vickers, Mountbatten and the Royal Houses of Europe

Monday 12th July
9.00-11.00:
Session 2: War
chair: Antony Best, LSE)
Roundtable on Mountbatten and SEAC
Nicholas Tarling (Auckland), John Springhall (Ulster),
Peter Dennis (ADFA, Univ. New South Wales),

11.00: coffee
11.30: Visit to Broadlands

1.00: lunch

2.00: Session 3: Myth

Adrian Smith (Southampton), The Mountbatten myth
Screening of Mountbatten at the movies

3.00: Plenary lecture 2:
Philip Ziegler, Mountbatten and India

4.00: tea

4.15-6.00: Session 4: India
(chair: Ian Copland, Monash)
Stephen Ashton (Institute of Commonwealth Studies), The Princes and the General: Mountbatten, the Royal Family and influence in post-independence India and Burma
Tom Fraser (Ulster), Mountbatten: The Challenge of Partition Poul Pedersen (Aarhus)Out of India: Prince Peter of Greece and Denmark, Princess Marie of Greece and Denmark, Earl Mountbatten of Burma, and Pandit Jahawarlal Nehru

7.30: Conference Banquet

Tuesday 13th July
9.00: Session 5: Monarchy
(chair: Adrian Smith, Southampton)
Philip Williamson (Durham), The Monarchy and Public Values in the Inter-War Years
Sian Nicholas (Aberystwyth) Media and Monarchy in the Mid-Twentieth Century
Nick Hiley (Kent), Mountbatten and Caricature

10.45: Coffee
11.00: Session 6: Empire
(chair: Miles Taylor, Southampton)
Nick Owen (Queens College, Oxford), Mountbatten and the End of Empire in the 1950s
Eric Grove (Hull), Mountbatten and Naval Defence Strategy
Philip Murphy (Reading), By Invitation Only: Lord Mountbatten, Prince Philip and the Attempt to Create a Commonwealth ‘Bilderberg Group’, 1964-1966
John Simpson & Mark Smith (Southampton), Mountbatten and UK Nuclear Weapons Policy

1.00: Lunch

2.00:Close of conference