India Hicks

Yes.

Well, less in Gossip Collins and Tatler because she was quite reclusive.

My mother was very happy to sit on a sofa and read and be very, very quiet.

And when she came back from India and two Commonwealth tours, she really was quite exhausted.

She'd also had a childhood of being moved around all the time.

Correct.

She did the two Commonwealth tours and then stayed on a bit.

She didn't want to be a lady in waiting.

It wasn't really a role for her.

But yes, that's exactly right.

She stayed on.

You know, one of my...

I think great privileges in life is that I got to accompany my mother to our late Queen's funeral.

And as you know only too well, there were two funerals, one in London and one in Windsor.

The one in London was, as you know, you were there, spectacular on every level.

moving to a degree but the one in Windsor was even more emotional and amazing when we arrived if you remember the smell of those flowers that had been laid out on the long walk but to me I will never forget my mother was she wanted to go in the wheelchair because she was finding walking difficult at that stage and we went in and we were in the front row she was in her wheelchair and when the Queen's coffin came by my mother whispered to me get me up

And I heaved her up out of that wheelchair and she went down into the deepest of curtsies and she kept in that deep curtsy until that very slow moving coffin had walked all the way past.

And then and only then did she get back up.

The other amazing thing is, of course, and this comes back to the duty and service of that generation.

When the queen died, there is obviously in the royal court, the royal horse had a period of mourning where you would be dressed appropriately in black, which I think is a month.