A historian fighting for the release of a tranche of royal letters claims they may have been suppressed to hide details of ‘lovers and mistresses’. Andrew Lownie says he has spent £250,000 of his own money trying to see the private diaries of Lord Mountbatten, written from 1918 until 1979, when he was killed by the IRA. The Mountbatten files include the private diaries of his wife Edwina, written from 1921 until her death in 1960, along with the correspondence between the pair. The 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma and his wife Edwina, Countess Mountbatten, pictured in their ceremonial robes in 1953 Lord Louis Mountbatten , the last Governor General from Britain waving a cheery farewell to the crowds in Delhi