Lady Pamela HICKS (1929-2026)
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Obit in the Times of 6 June 2026
E X T R A C T
Lady Pamela Hicks obituary: Lady in waiting to Queen Elizabeth
Daughter of Lord Mountbatten, the last viceroy of India who was murdered by the IRA, dies aged 97
When, in her later years, Lady Pamela Hicks described herself as “just an old woman, living in a little house in the country with her dog”, she was being a tad disingenuous.
As the self-effacing younger of the two daughters of Earl Mountbatten of Burma [who called her ‘Pammy’], Hicks was for many years on the inside track of epic world events…
… Lady Pamela was born into a tangled web of European royalty. She was a cousin of Prince Philip and a great-great granddaughter of Queen Victoria. Her grandmother, Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine, was the eldest granddaughter of the Queen Empress, and her great-aunts included the last Tsarina of Russia and the Grand Duchess Serge, both murdered by the Bolsheviks during the Russian revolution.
Her mother was the daughter of the Conservative MP, Wilfrid Ashley, later Baron Mount-Temple, who was married to Maud, the only child of Sir Ernest Cassel. He was the son of a German Jewish money lender and small-time banker who in a remarkable career accrued an immense fortune, and as the private banker and financial adviser to the future King Edward VII, became a pivotal figure in the establishment.
Pamela Carmen Louise Mountbatten was born prematurely in 1929 in the Ritz Hotel, Barcelona, where her mother, an inveterate traveller, happened to be at the time. It was a difficult birth and the then Lord Louis Mountbatten was almost sick with anxiety because he feared that the baby might be stillborn.
…Pamela was, however, born safely, and [King] Alfonso [XIII of Spain] became her godfather, as did the Duke of Kent, the youngest-surviving son of King George V and Queen Mary.
… Edwina was an unfaithful wife — with “at least 18 lovers” according to her daughter — and Lord Louis found consolation in his daughters…
…[during WWII she] lived with the Vanderbilts, who were family friends, as privileged evacuees, and Hicks attended Miss Hewitt’s Classes on the Upper East Side…
… At home Lady Pamela was a bridesmaid to Princess Elizabeth when she married Prince Philip in November 1947, and became one of her ladies-in-waiting, a period she covered, along with her childhood and time in India, in her second volume of memoirs, Daughter of Empire: Life as a Mountbatten (2012). Of the princess’s wedding she wrote how Elizabeth remained “wonderfully calm” as she coped with her tiara breaking, then her pearls (a gift from her father) going missing and finally her bouquet being misplaced. It had been put in a cupboard “to remain cool”.
She was with the princess in Kenya, on the first leg of a Commonwealth tour originally planned to have been undertaken by the King and Queen, when the news came through that George VI, who had been ill for some time, had died at Sandringham House, and that the princess was now Queen. She recalled: “Because of where we were, we were almost the last people in the world to know.” She hugged Elizabeth, she told El Pais, but immediately thought, “My God, she’s the Queen now!” and sank into a deep curtsy…
… In 1960, having received ten proposals from other suitors — “they weren’t all serious” — she married the interior designer of the Swinging Sixties, David Hicks…
… After her marriage, Lady Pamela divided her time between bringing up her two daughters, Edwina, who married the actor Jeremy Brudenell, India, a former model and Bahamas-based businesswoman, and her son, Ashley, an interior designer. She supported her husband, who died of lung cancer in 1998, in his business, and was involved in charity work, being patron, president or vice-president of 23 organisations. Effortlessly elegant, notable in later years for her mane of swept-back hair with wings of grey at the temples, she said in 2024, “It’s instinctive to try and be neat. To be appropriate.” She is survived by her children and eight grandchildren.
Lady Pamela escaped the IRA bomb that blew up her father’s fishing boat, Shadow V, off the coast of Co Sligo in the Irish Republic, on August 27, 1979, killing him, her 14-year-old nephew, Nicholas Knatchbull; their 15-year-old boat boy, Paul Maxwell, and seriously injuring her sister and brother-in-law, Lord and Lady Brabourne, and Lord Brabourne’s 83-year-old mother, who later died in hospital.
That morning she stayed behind in the family’s holiday home, Classiebawn Castle, rather than join the lobster-potting expedition, but it was she who had to break the news of the deaths to her sister, who was recovering from her injuries in hospital, and thereafter support her through the trauma. Years later she remarked that she had forgiven the IRA for what it did.
Lady Pamela Hicks was born on April 19, 1929. She died on June 5, 2026, aged 97
From the Telegraph print edn of 6 June 2026:
Lady Pamela Hicks, daughter of Lord Mountbatten and childhood friend of Queen Elizabeth II
The ebullient ‘Pammy’ was at the late Queen’s side as a bridesmaid at her wedding and lady-in-waiting at her accession, at Treetops in Kenya
Lady Pamela Hicks, who has died aged 97, was the wife of the interior designer David Hicks and the younger daughter of Lord Mountbatten of Burma, to whom she bore a striking physical resemblance; she thus enjoyed a ringside seat at some of the most momentous events of modern history…
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Henry W
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BREMENMURRAY
Richard R
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malcolm davies
LoopyCrown3
When my father died, he left a book of instructions for his funeral. A book.
My mother left an envelope. We opened it this weekend. Inside was a single page: a few words about how much she loved us, followed by a simple request: no eulogy, no sermon, no memorial. But please, lots of rousing hymns.
And that is exactly what we intend to do."
BREMENMURRAY
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Paul Theroff
In the past I have attended numerous funerals of my parents' first cousins, including as recently as last year; but there have also been some, including one this year, where only immediate family was invited, and cousins were not invited.