It has emerged that the funeral of one of the late Queen’s closest friends, Lady Pamela Hicks, will take place on Saturday – the same day as the King’s official birthday parade, Trooping the Colour
King Charles has been left with a potential diary conflict on the day of his official birthday parade.
The annual Trooping the Colour, which sees a spectacular military parade followed by a Buckingham Palace flypast, is set to take place on Saturday. It will see the King joined by all working members of his family, including the Prince and Princess of Wales and their children, Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis.
Now it has emerged that on the same day, one of Charles’ late mother’s closest friends, Lady Pamela Hicks, will be laid to rest. Lady Pamela, who was a bridesmaid for Elizabeth II when she married Prince Philip in 1947, died at the age of 97 last week.
When news of her death emerged, a spokesperson for the King said in a statement that Charles he was “greatly saddened” to hear of Lady Pamela’s passing, describing her as a woman whose “warmth, wit and perspicacity always made such an impression”.
Her funeral is set to take place at 3pm at a church in Oxfordshire, meaning it is unclear if any royals will be able to attend to pay their final respects, given Trooping the Colour runs until 1pm.
Lady Pamela’s death was announced on Friday by her daughter India, who was a bridesmaid at the wedding of Charles and Princess Diana in 1981.
Born in April 1929, Lady Pamela was the youngest daughter of Lord Mountbatten -the uncle of Prince Philip – and Edwina Ashley. Thanks to her family’s close ties to the Royal Family, she was asked to be one of eight bridesmaids of the then Princess Elizabeth when she married the former Duke of Edinburgh at Westminster Abbey in November 1947.
Afterwards, she became a lady-in-waiting to Elizabeth, and staying on in the role when she became Queen in 1952. She later recalled being with the former monarch in Kenya, when she had learned her father had passed away and was now Queen.
In 1960, she married David Hicks in a society wedding, where a young Princess Anne was bridesmaid. As well as daughter India, they also had another daughter, Edwina, and a son, Ashley.
In 1979, her father, Lord Mountbatten was killed by an IRA bomb while fishing off the coast of County Sligo in Ireland. In November 1983, Lady Pamela accompanied the Queen to the unveiling of a statue of the late Lord Mountbatten in Westminster, at which the monarch gave a speech.
She lost her husband, David, to lung cancer in 1998. Lady Pamela remained a lifelong friend of the late Queen and published several memoirs about her life with the Royal Family and her early life as the daughter of Lord Mountbatten.
When Elizabeth II died in 2022, she became the oldest living descendant of Queen Victoria and attended the state funeral alongside daughter India.
