Lord Mountbatten was a ‘homosexual with a perversion for young boys’, according to a secret dossier compiled by the FBI.
The intelligence files describe the 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma and his wife Edwina as ‘persons of extremely low morals’ who frequently had extramarital affairs.
One source said Mountbatten’s penchant for young men made him ‘an unfit man to direct any sort of military operations’.
It is not known why agents began compiling the dossier, but the FBI has long been known to keep compromising material on high-profile figures, most famously Martin Luther King.
The 75-year-old FBI documents were obtained through a freedom of information request by British historian Andrew Lownie, who has written a biography of the couple.
In the book, The Mountbattens: their Lives & Loves, Mountbatten’s former driver Ron Perks reveals that one of his boss’s favourite destinations was ‘an upmarket gay brothel used by senior naval officers’ called the Red House near Rabat.
Agents began compiling the file, which spans more than three decades, in February 1944, shortly after Mountbatten became supreme allied commander of southeast Asia.
Rumours about Mountbatten’s sexuality have long swirled following his death 40 years ago.
The royal kept a large group of gay friends, including Noël Coward, Terence Rattigan, Ivor Novello and Tom Driberg, who reportedly referred to him as ‘Mountbottom’.
Lownie’s new book, to be published on Thursday, contains an interview with Anthony Daly, a rent boy to the rich and famous during the 1970s.
Daly claims: ‘Tom said Mountbatten had something of a fetish for uniforms — handsome young men in military uniforms (with high boots) and beautiful boys in school uniform.’
Drip, drip, drip...