John Ulick Knatchbull, 7th Baron Brabourne,CBE (9 November 1924 – 23 September 2005), professionally known asJohn Brabourne, was a Britishpeer, television producer andOscar-nominated film producer. Married to the elder daughter of1st Earl Mountbatten, Brabourne was a survivor of thebombing which killed his father-in-law, mother and son.

Brabourne was born in 1924, the second son ofMichael Knatchbull, 5th Baron Brabourne, and his wife,Lady Doreen Browne. He was educated atEton College andBrasenose College, Oxford. He was barely 14 when his father died in February 1939 and his elder brother,Norton, inherited theBarony.

At the end of the war, Brabourne returned to England and settled in the family seat,Mersham in Kent. On 26 October 1946, atRomsey Abbey in Hampshire, at the age of 21, he marriedPatricia Mountbatten, elder daughter ofLouis Mountbatten, 1st Viscount Mountbatten, later 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma. Brabourne's best man at the wedding was Squadron Leader Charles Harris-St. John.

Lady Brabourne was to inherit her father's peerages in due course. This would make Lord and Lady Brabourne among the few married couples to each holdpeerages in their own right. Also, Lady Brabourne was related to the British royal family, and her auntLouise Mountbatten was at that time the Crown Princess (later Queen) of Sweden. In February 1947, only months after the wedding, Brabourne's father-in-law was appointedViceroy of India. The newly-wed couple spent several months in India, residing with her parents in theviceregal palace. In November the same year, Lady Brabourne's first cousinPhilip, Duke of Edinburgh, wedPrincess Elizabeth, future queen of the United Kingdom.

Lord and Lady Brabourne had eight children, includingNorton Louis Philip Knatchbull, 3rd Earl Mountbatten of Burma (born 8 October 1947),^{[citation needed]}Lady Amanda Patricia Victoria Knatchbull (born 26 June 1957),^[1] and Nicholas Timothy Charles Knatchbull.

In the late 1940s, shortly after leaving the army, Brabourne began working as an assistant production manager for certain television productions, mostly based on war-related themes. He graduated to the role of production manager by the early 1950s, and finally became a producer in his own right in 1958, withHarry Black a romantic story set in India, with war as the distant context. This was followed bySink the Bismarck! (1960). War, empire and India were recurrent themes in his work, andA Passage to India (1984) is among his films.^[2] His other motion pictures includeMurder on the Orient Express (1974),Death on the Nile (1978), andLittle Dorrit (1988).^[3]

In 1970, he founded Mersham Productions, a production house named after his family seat in Kent, which produced many of his works thereafter. He served as a director ofThames Television (later chairman) andEuston Films from 1978 to 1995, and a director ofThorn EMI from 1981 to 1986.^{[citation needed]}

John Brabourne received two Academy Award nominations for Best Picture, as producer ofRomeo and Juliet (1968) andA Passage to India.^[4] In 1985, Brabourne was invested as a Fellow of theBritish Film Institute, an organisation he also served as a Governor.^[5][6] In 1993, he was made a Commander of theOrder of the British Empire.^{[citation needed]}

He was the subject ofThis Is Your Life in 1990 when he was surprised byMichael Aspel at the Old Brewery venue in London.^{[citation needed]}

Brabourne served as a governor of various schools, includingNorton Knatchbull School (founded by an ancestorc. 1630 AD) from 1947 to 2000;Wye College in Kent from 1955 to 2000, andGordonstoun School from 1964 to 1994. He also served asPro-Chancellor of theUniversity of Kent from 1993 to 1999.^{[citation needed]}

On 27 August 1979, while the family was on holiday inMullaghmore, County Sligo, Lord Brabourne's father-in-law, Earl Mountbatten of Burma, took a number of family members out lobstering on his motorboat,Shadow V, in Donegal Bay. Having planned to murder Mountbatten, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) placed a bomb inside the boat on the night of the 26th. Mountbatten and several members of the party were killed the next morning when the bomb was triggered by an IRA observer onshore who was armed with a radio detonator. The dead included Brabourne's 83-year-old mother, theDowager Baroness Brabourne; one of his twin 14-year-old sons, Nicholas Knatchbull; and 15-year-old Paul Maxwell fromCounty Fermanagh who had been hired for the summer as Mountbatten's boat boy. Brabourne, his wife Patricia, and their other twin son Timothy were severely injured, but survived the attack.

Lord Brabourne died in 2005 at his home in Kent at the age of 80.^[3] His wife Patricia, Countess Mountbatten of Burma, died in June 2017.^{[citation needed]}

• Hansard 1803–2005:contributions in Parliament by Lord Brabourne
• John Brabourne atIMDb
• Tribute & Memorial web-site to Louis, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, mountbattenofburma.com. Accessed 8 December 2022.
• Interview with John Brabourne, HistoryProject.org.uk. Accessed 8 December 2022.

• 1924 births
• 2005 deaths
• Alumni of Brasenose College, Oxford
• Barons Brabourne
• Knatchbull family
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