Who is Lady Pamela Hicks and how is she related to the royal family?

British aristocrat is the youngest daughter of Louis Mountbatten

(Getty Images)

Those who are unfamiliar with the British royal family might not have heard of Lady Pamela Hicks, but she is in fact related to them.

The 91-year-old is the first cousin of the Duke of Edinburgh, the Queen’s husband, and was even a bridesmaid at their wedding in 1947, when Pamela was 18 years old.

If you don’t know Pamela, you might know her daughter, India Hicks, 53, the designer and author who was a bridesmaid at Princess Diana’s wedding to Prince Charles in 1981.

As a new documentary series, The Windsors: Inside the Royal Dynasty, charts the life of those in the royal family, here’s everything you need to know about Lady Pamela Hicks.

Who is Lady Pamela Hicks?

Lady Pamela Hicks was born on 19 April 1929 and is the youngest daughter of Edwina Ashley and Lord Louis Mountbatten, whose eldest sister, Princess Alice of Greece and Denmark (sometimes known as Princess Alice of Battenberg) is Prince Philip’s mother.

Pamela was born in Barcelona, Spain and attended school in New York.

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This makes Lord Mounbatten Prince Philip’s uncle, and Lady Pamela Hicks his first cousin.

Pamela had an older sister, Patricia Knatchbull, who died in June 2017 at the age of 93.

During her father’s term as Viceroy of India before its independence in 1948, Pamela also briefly lived in India.

She is featured in the first season of The Crown and has published memoirs about her life in New Delhi in her book: India Remembered: A Personal Account of the Mountbattens During the Transfer of Power, which was published in 2007.

In 2012, she published a second volume of memoirs titled Daughter of Empire: Life as a Mountbatten, which charted her childhood and adult life.

Who is Lady Pamela Hicks’ family?

Pamela married the interior decorator and designer David Nightingale Hicks in 1960 at the age of 31.

The couple had three children together: Edwina, 59, Ashley, 57 and India, 53.

All three children work in creative industries, with Edwina working as an artist, Ashely as an interior designer, and India as an interior designer who also has her own eponymous label selling jewellery, handbags, perfumes and other beauty products.

After 38 years of marriage, Mr Hicks died of lung cancer in 1998.

Did she work for Queen Elizabeth II?

For a period of time, Pamela worked as the Queen’s lady-in-waiting. This meant that she acted as a personal assistant to HRH.

Pamela took on the role before Elizabeth became Queen, and when the monarch’s father, King George VI, died in 1952, Pamela continued to be her lady-in-waiting as she took to the throne. accompanying her on a royal tour in 1953 to Jamaica, Malta, Brisbane and Gibraltar.