From telegraph.co.uk
Lady Pamela describes some of her most intimate moments with the sovereign, reading from never-before-seen journals
To the rest of the world, the Queen is a distant figure to be admired from afar, a face on a coin, a wave or a smile on television.
But to Lady Pamela Hicks, she is a childhood friend and confidante, a brilliant mimic, Highland dancing partner and chocolate lover.
Lady Pamela, 91, a first cousin of the Duke of Edinburgh, was at the Queen’s side as lady-in-waiting for some of history’s most defining moments, from her wedding to her coronation, at which she revealed, her uncle, Lord Brabourne, wore robes borrowed from a film costume department.
For the first time on television, she has described some of her most intimate moments with the sovereign, reading from never-before-seen journals, which marvel at the Queen’s “tremendous arm muscles” from the constant waving and recount how the newly-crowned monarch tricked a boatload of tourists searching for her in Australia.
As well as keeping chocolates in her room to prevent her “greedy” family from swiping them, the monarch is revealed to be surprisingly thrifty, once sending a message to her mother, querying her need for so many new dresses.
The missive elicited a “very tart reply”.
Should lingering doubts remain, Ms Hicks, a bridesmaid when her godfather, Prince Charles, married Diana, Princess of Wales, recalled being handed down thermal underwear that had once belonged to Princess Anne, 17 years her senior.
When, in 1952, an ailing King George VI asked his daughter to undertake a Commonwealth tour on his behalf, it was Lady Pamela she asked to accompany her.
Urged by her father, Lord Mountbatten, to keep a diary, she began: “February 1, 1952. We landed in Nairobi punctually at 10.15. It was a very formal arrival with men wearing swords and decorations. The governor was there to receive Lillibet.”
But just days later, all carefully laid plans were abandoned. The King had died as the royal party slept at the Treetops hotel, Kenya’s oldest safari lodge.
“She climbed up that ladder as a Princess and then, in the morning, she came down the ladder as Queen,” Lady Pamela noted. “But she didn’t know.”
Later given the news by his “stunned” equerry, Prince Philip suggested he and his wife go for a stroll by a trout stream.
“You could see the moment she’s been told, the body language,” Lady Pamela recalled. “She stopped walking and slumped a bit. And one thought, how awful for her.”
Reminiscing about the Queen's coronation, she described how “frail” she had looked, sitting in the sunlight at Westminster Abbey.
“Seeing her, this young woman of 27, utterly alone, I wondered how she’ll have the strength to undertake this duty all her life,” she admitted.
A few months later, Lady Pamela was again by the Queen’s side as she embarked on a six-month tour of the Commonwealth.
It was a gruelling trip and even on days off, it was hard to get away from royal watchers.
She laughed as she read a journal entry from their time in Australia: “I sat with Lillibet under a tree, listening to her holding forth about being marooned on a desert island,” she said.
“But she cheered up considerably, when a boatload of trippers appeared shouting whether we had seen the Queen, where is she?
“Lillibet, in slacks, tore down to the beach, pointed to the other side of the island and yelled: ‘She went that-a-way’ and jumped up and down with joy as the boat disappeared around the corner.”
In another telling entry, she wrote: “Philip and Lillibet have to keep waving nearly all day long. She’s developed tremendous muscles in her arms. Sitting still in a car, being yelled at and having to wave is part of the tour that Philip loathes.”
The death of Lord Mountbatten
Lady Pamela Hicks had chosen not to go out on the boat with her father, Lord Mountbatten, that day in August 1979 when he was killed by an IRA bomb hidden aboard.
“We were having a wonderful holiday,” she said. “You could see he (her father) was having great fun, going much too fast and turning much too quickly. And then, a bomb went off.
“Nothing was left. There were just all these bits of dark green wood scattered all over the sea.”
Earl Mountbatten, 79, died alongside his grandson Nicholas Knatchbull, 14, Lady Doreen Brabourne, 83, and a local boat boy called Paul Maxwell, 15.
Lady Pamela’s sister Patricia, her husband John and their son Timothy, Nicholas’s twin, were injured.
After the funeral, the royal party boarded a train at Waterloo, and the Queen summoned Lady Pamela.
“She asked me to tell her exactly what had happened, because she adored my father,” she said.
“And then, silence. The Queen’s emotions are all inside, always. She is very strong.”
Ms Hicks said her mother rarely spoke of the bombing, because there was a great sense that it was her sister’s story.
“My aunt was on the boat, my aunt lost a child, my aunt lived through it and survived it,” she said.
“But I felt it was important because otherwise people would assume that my mother’s had been a very easy life. Of course she’s had a very blessed, privileged, remarkable life, but it hasn't been easy. Every family carries great, dark demons and my family is no different.”
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