LONDON — Lady Pamela Hicks, a lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth II who witnessed firsthand the winding-down of the British Empire and who lost her father to an IRA bomb, has died aged 97.
Born Lady Pamela Mountbatten, she was the younger daughter of the famed beauty Lady Edwina Ashley and Lord Louis Mountbatten, the last viceroy of India who was killed, alongside members of his family, by an Irish Republican Army bomb in 1979.
As lady-in-waiting, she traveled extensively with Queen Elizabeth and became a confidante. The families were also related — Lord Mountbatten was Prince Philip’s maternal uncle, and a cousin of the queen.
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Alongside her work for the queen, Lady Pamela spent much of her adult life working for charities including Oxfam, Indian Partition Relief and Girls’ Nautical Training Corps.
Her daughter India Hicks, a model-turned-designer and entrepreneur, said in a statement that the family was “profoundly grateful to God for the gift she has been to us all — for all we received from her, and all she has meant to us.”
She added: “The grief we feel is a measure of the love we have shared. We will treasure the many memories we have of her: memories full of grace, laughter and joy. My mother had a remarkable life.”
King Charles III, who had been close to Lord Mountbatten, his great-uncle and mentor, offered his condolences. On Friday, a Buckingham Palace spokesperson said: “His Majesty was greatly saddened to learn of the death of Lady Pamela Hicks, a sorrow tempered by the fondest memories and deepest gratitude for her long life and loyal service to Queen Elizabeth.”
The spokesperson added: “The king and queen’s thoughts are with Lady Pamela’s family as they mourn a woman whose warmth, wit and perspicacity always made such an impression, and who will be so dearly missed by all those who knew and loved her.”
Hicks was born in 1929, and spent her youth in India where her father, a war hero, was serving as the country’s last viceroy. He managed Britain’s withdrawal from India, the country’s transition to independence, and the partition process that created the separate states of India and Pakistan.
During those years Lady Pamela got to know figures including Mahatma Gandhi and Pandit Nehru. As a teenager, she did welfare work and helped to run a medical clinic serving villages surrounding Delhi.
She would eventually return to Britain, where she served as a bridesmaid to the-then Princess Elizabeth at her wedding to Prince Philip in 1947. She was with Princess Elizabeth at Treetops hotel in Kenya when the young royal first heard of her father’s death and became queen. Lady Pamela remembered immediately doing a deep curtsy to the new monarch.
In 1960, she married David Hicks. He would become a decorator to the stars and a symbol of the Swinging ’60s whose color-saturated interiors and use of geometric patterns would become iconic and remain influential to this day. He also had a passion for collecting all sorts of things, including 19th-century and antique furniture, fine art, and smaller objects for his famous “tablescapes,” and for gardening on the grandest scale at their estate in the English countryside.
Lady Pamela also helped her husband in his business, and indulged his eccentricities. David Hicks was from an upper-middle-class Essex family who sometimes acted grander than his more down-to-earth wife. He’d always been fascinated by the Mountbattens, whose family tree includes Charlemagne, two saints, Lady Godiva, and a string of royals.
The couple had three children — Edwina, India and Ashley — all of whom survive her, along with eight grandchildren.
At India’s bidding, Lady Pamela published the second volume of her memoirs in 2012.
“I have a very bossy daughter and she said: ‘Just tell all the family stories before you’re dead, and then they will be there for my children,’” said Lady Pamela at the launch party for “Daughter of an Empire: Life as a Mountbatten,” which took place at Ralph Lauren’s Bond Street store.
“I know perfectly well that with the grandchildren, you can never get them to listen or read about the grandparents.” Lady Pamela added. “But still, [India] was bossy and so I’ve done it.”
The book was Hicks’ second after “India Remembered,” which she wrote about the country’s independence. “That remains my favorite because that was such an incredible day of birth for these two nations: independent India and the new Pakistan,” said Lady Pamela at the launch.
During that same launch, India Hicks said her mother had an amazing life. “She was with the queen when the queen became queen. How many people in the world can say that? She was at Mahatma Gandhi’s funeral, front row, having been very close to him during the apartheid of India. Who else can say that?” she asked.
In 2022 Lady Pamela published another book, “My Years With the Queen, and Other Stories,” detailing her life as a lady-in-waiting. Ever the loyal servant, Lady Pamela was one of the first mourners to arrive at the funeral of Queen Elizabeth in 2022, rolling up to Westminster Abbey in a wheelchair pushed by India Hicks.