Lady Pamela Hicks

Lady Pamela Hicks
Pamela Mountbatten with Jawaharlal Nehru as she was about to leave India in June 1948.
Born Pamela Carmen Louise Mountbatten
(1929-04-19) 19 April 1929
Barcelona, Spain
Spouse(s)
David Nightingale Hicks
(m. 1960; d. 1998)
Children Edwina Brudenell
Ashley Hicks
India Hicks
Parent(s) Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma
Edwina Ashley
Family Battenberg/Mountbatten

Lady Pamela Carmen Louise Hicks (née Mountbatten; born 19 April 1929) is a British aristocrat. She is the younger daughter of the 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma by his wife, Edwina Mountbatten. Through her father, Lady Pamela is a first cousin of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, and a great niece of the last Empress of Russia, Alexandra Feodorovna. She is the last surviving child of Louis and Edwina Mountbatten.

Family background

Lady Pamela was born in Barcelona, Spain, in 1929, the younger sister of Patricia Mountbatten. Through her father, she is a first cousin of the Duke of Edinburgh and a great-great-grandchild of Queen Victoria. Through her mother, she is the second great-granddaughter of the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury. During her youth, Lady Pamela lived with her paternal grandmother, Victoria, Marchioness of Milford Haven, during school holidays.

She attended Hewitt School in New York City.[1]

India

In 1947, Lady Pamela accompanied her parents to India remaining with them throughout her father's term as Viceroy of pre-Independence India and then Governor-General of post-Partition India through 1948, living with them in Government House, New Delhi and the summer Viceregal Lodge in Simla.

Bridesmaid and lady-in-waiting to the Queen

In November 1947, Lady Pamela acted as a bridesmaid to then-Princess Elizabeth at her 1947 wedding to Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (Lady Pamela's first cousin).[2] As lady-in-waiting to Princess Elizabeth she was with her and the Duke of Edinburgh in Kenya when King George VI died on 6 February 1952.[2] In late 1953 and early 1954, she accompanied the Queen as lady-in-waiting on the royal tour to Jamaica, Panama, Fiji, Tonga, New Zealand, Australia, Ceylon, Aden, Libya, Malta and Gibraltar.[2]

Girls' Nautical Training Corps

Lady Pamela Mountbatten was the Corps Commandant of the Girls' Nautical Training Corps from around 1952 to around 1959.[3][4][5]

Marriage and children

Lady Pamela is the widow of interior decorator and designer David Nightingale Hicks (25 March 1929 – 29 March 1998), son of stockbroker Herbert Hicks and Iris Elsie Platten. They were married on 13 January 1960 at Romsey Abbey in Hampshire. The bridesmaids were Princess Anne, Princess Clarissa of Hesse (daughter of her cousin Sophie), Victoria Marten (god-daughter of the bride), Lady Amanda Knatchbull and the Hon. Joanna Knatchbull (daughters of the bride's sister Patricia).[6] Upon returning from honeymoon in the West Indies and New York, Lady Pamela learnt of the death of her mother in February 1960.[7]

Together, the couple had three children:[8]

David Nightingale Hicks died on 29 March 1998, aged 69, from lung cancer.

Later life

Lady Pamela Hicks has been a Director of H Securities Unlimited, a fund management and brokerage firm, since 1991. She is a former director of Cottesmore Farms. In 2002, she sold off her mother's tiara at Sotheby's.[9]

In 2007, Lady Pamela published her memoirs of her days in New Delhi and Simla, when India was partitioned into India and Pakistan and the Union Jack came down. She wrote in India Remembered: A Personal Account of the Mountbattens During the Transfer of Power that, while her mother, Countess Mountbatten of Burma, and Jawaharlal Nehru, the future Prime Minister of India, were deeply in love, "the relationship remained platonic".[10][11] In 2012, she published the second volume of her memoirs titled Daughter of Empire: Life as a Mountbatten, chronicling her childhood, her time in India, and her time as lady-in-waiting to the Queen.[2]

In film and television

In 2016 she was portrayed in the first season of The Crown.[12] She is portrayed by Lily Travers in the 2017 film Viceroy's House.

Styles from birth

  • 19 April 1929 – 27 August 1946: Miss Pamela Mountbatten
  • 27 August 1946 – 21 June 1948: The Honourable Pamela Mountbatten
  • 21 June 1948 – 13 January 1960: Lady Pamela Mountbatten
  • 13 January 1960 – present: Lady Pamela Hicks

Published works

  • Mountbatten, Pamela (2007). India Remembered: A Personal Account of the Mountbattens During the Transfer of Power. Foreward by India Hicks. Pavilion Books. ISBN 978-1-86205-759-3.
  • ——— (2012). Daughter of Empire: Life as a Mountbatten. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN 978-0297864820.

Ancestry

References

  1. ↑ Reginato, James. "The Raj Duet" (September 5, 2013). Vanity Fair. Retrieved 11 January 2018.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Murphy, Victoria (3 November 2012). "Revealed: Queen's lifelong friend on what happened the night Elizabeth found out her father, King George, had died". Daily Mirror. London. Retrieved 14 June 2013.
  3. ↑ "Girl's Nautical Training Corps Commandant Lady Mountbatten (bottom row, 4th right) at Surbiton, Surrey training course, 18th August 1959". Retrieved 20 July 2018.
  4. ↑ "1952 - Lady Pamela Mountbatten visits members of Girls Nautical training corps.: The annual training course of the Girls' Nautical Training Corps - a voluntary". Retrieved 20 July 2018.
  5. ↑ "Aug. 08, 1959 - Lady Pamela Mountbatten visits girl's nautical training corps". Retrieved 20 July 2018.
  6. ↑ "The wedding of David Hicks and Lady Pamela Mountbatten". National Portrait Gallery, London.
  7. ↑ "Lady Mountbatten dies in sleep on visit to Borneo". The Sydney Morning Herald. Australian Associated Press. 21 February 1960. Retrieved 14 June 2013 – via Google News.
  8. ↑ Gibson, David (2 April 1998). "David Hicks, 69, Interior Design Star of the 60s, Is Dead". The New York Times. Retrieved 14 June 2013.
  9. ↑ Roy, Amid (16 November 2002). "Crown of Raj last family on sale: Lady Mountbatten's tiara to go under hammer at Sotheby's". The Telegraph. London. Retrieved 14 June 2013.
  10. ↑ Driscoll, Margarette (22 July 2007). "Love triangle at the heart of the British handover". The Sunday Times. London. Retrieved 11 April 2017.
  11. ↑ "Pamela Mountbatten on the Jawaharlal-Edwina relationship". The Hindu. 18 July 2007. Retrieved 2 March 2011.
  12. ↑ Hicks, India (29 November 2016). "Watching The Crown with Lady Pamela Hicks, Queen Elizabeth's Lady-in-Waiting". Town and Country.
Lines of succession
Preceded by
Louis Ellingsworth		 Line of succession to the British throne Succeeded by
Ashley Hicks

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