A card from Lady Pamela Hicks

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In December 2024, I received a special royal post card from the United Kingdom.


Royal Family: Lady Pamela Hics card

It was a postcard from Lady Pamela Hicks. But who is she actually? How is she related to the Royal Family?


Who is Lady Pamela Hicks?


Lady Pamela Carmen Louis Hicks, born Mountbatten, was born on 19 April 1929 in Barcelona, Spain.



Royal Family


Her parents were Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma and his wife Edwina Ashley. 

Her paternal grandparents were Prince Louis of Battenberg and Princes Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine.

The mother of Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine was Princess Alice of the United Kingdom. Princess Victoria was thus a sister of Princess Alexandra, the last Empress of Russia. 

Lady Pamela Hicks is thus a niece of Prince Philip, the late Duke of Edinburgh.

Title and more ties


At the request of 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.




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.


A royal bridesmaid


In November 1947, Lady Pamela acted as a bridesmaid to then- Princess Elizabeth at her 1947 wedding to Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. 






Duties


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.

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.

Love and marriage


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).

Upon returning from honeymoon in the West Indies and New York, Lady Pamela learnt of the death of her mother in February 1960.

Together, the couple had 3 children:

* Edwina Victoria Louise Hicks (born 24 December 1961),
married the actor Jeremy Brudenell.
* Ashley Louis David Hicks (born 18 July 1963)
* India Amanda Caroline Hicks (born 5 September 1967)

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. 

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".

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.

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.

In 2022, she and her daughter India, atteded the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II. 





Source pictures: Wikipedia unless the postcard I received



Location: United Kingdom

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