Lady Pamela Hicks

Lady Pamela was born on 19 April 1929 in Barcelona, Spain, to Edwina Ashley and the then Lord Louis Mountbatten (who later became The 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma). She is the second of two children, as a younger sister of Patricia, 2nd Countess Mountbatten of Burma. A member of the Mountbatten family by birth, she descended from the Battenberg family, a morganatic cadet branch of the House of Hesse-Darmstadt. At the request of King George V, her grandparents, Prince Louis of Battenberg and Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine, relinquished their German princely titles in 1917 in exchange for titles in the British peerage due to anti-German sentiment in Britain. Her father, who was also born a prince of Battenberg, was later created Earl Mountbatten of Burma. Through her father, she is a great-great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, and as of 2026, their oldest surviving descendant. Her mother, Edwina, was the daughter of The 1st Baron Mount Temple. Through her mother, Lady Pamela is also a great-granddaughter of Sir Ernest Cassel and a great-great-granddaughter of The 7th Earl of Shaftesbury. Through her father, she is a first cousin of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.

Her baptism was celebrated on 12 July 1929 in the Chapel Royal, St. James's Palace. Her godparents were: King Alfonso XIII and The Duke of Kent; Nadejda Mountbatten and Marjorie, Countess of Brecknock (Lady Louis' first cousin); and the Duchess of Peñaranda (María del Carmen Saavedra y Collado, Marqués de Villaviciosa).^{[citation needed]}. She was given the middle name of Carmen in honour of the Duchess of Peñaranda.

She attended Hewitt School in New York City, like her sister Patricia. ^[1]

In 1947, Lady Pamela accompanied her parents to British India, remaining with them throughout her father's term as the last Viceroy of India and then as Governor-General of post-Partition India through 1948, living with them in the palatial Viceroy's House in New Delhi and at the summer Viceregal Lodge in Simla. After partition, she served as co-secretary to her father, according to Freedom at Midnight, for which she gave interviews. Following Indian independence in August 1947 she became secretary to her parents' friend and associate, V.K. Krishna Menon, then acting as Indian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom.^[2]

In November 1947, Lady Pamela acted as a bridesmaid to then-Princess Elizabeth at her 1947 wedding to Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.^[3] As lady-in-waiting to Princess Elizabeth she was with her and the Duke of Edinburgh in Kenya when George VI died on 6 February 1952.^[3] 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.^[3]

Lady Pamela was the Corps Commandant of the Girls' Nautical Training Corps from around 1952 to around 1959.^[4][5][6]

She attended the wedding of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Katharine Worsley in 1961.

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), the Hon. Joanna Knatchbull and the Hon. Amanda Knatchbull (daughters of the bride's sister Patricia).^[7] Upon returning from honeymoon in the West Indies and New York, Lady Pamela learnt of the death of her mother in Jesselton in February 1960.^[8]

Together, the couple had three children:^[9]

• Edwina Victoria Louise Hicks (born 24 December 1961), who married actor Jeremy Brudenell;^[10]
• Ashley Louis David Hicks (born 18 July 1963), who has married Marina Allegra Federica Silvia Tondato and Kathryn Sharkey.
• India Amanda Caroline Hicks (born 5 September 1967), who married David Flint Wood.

David died on 29 March 1998, aged 69, from lung cancer. According to their daughter India, two ladies who knew David had been invited to the Grove by him shortly before his death. They arrived, having driven from London on the day of his death. They were told by Lady Pamela that he had died a few hours ago (Hicks was lying ‘in state’ in his garden according to his instructions) but as they had driven from London, she invited them to have ‘a cup of tea’.

Lady Pamela 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 her mother's pierced, millegraine-set tiara at Sotheby's.^[11]

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",^[12][13] 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.^[3]

After the death of her cousin, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh in 2021, she is the last surviving great-grandchild of Princess Alice of the United Kingdom, and following the death of Queen Elizabeth II in September 2022, she became the oldest living descendant of Queen Victoria.^[14] With her daughter, India Hicks, she attended the Queen's state funeral on 19 September 2022.^[15]

• 2 June 1953: Recipient of the Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Medal.^[16]
• 5 December 1978: Serving Sister of the Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem.^[17]

In 2016, she was portrayed in the first season of The Crown.^[18] She is portrayed by Lily Travers in the 2017 film Viceroy's House.

• Mountbatten, Pamela (2007). India Remembered: A Personal Account of the Mountbattens During the Transfer of Power. Foreword by India Hicks. Pavilion Books. ISBN 978-1-86205-759-3.
• ——— (2012). Daughter of Empire: Life as a Mountbatten. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN 978-0297864820.
• ——— (2024). My Years with the Queen: and Other Stories. Penguin Books. ISBN 978-1529148862.