We had spent a special time in Portugal, staying with close friends in Melides, beside rice fields, dunes and a wide Atlantic coast. Days spent on dusty roads driving too fast, gallops on the beach, lazy afternoons by the pool, after-dinner games of Murder, and a revolving cast of characters.

But before leaving I knew I needed to drive south to the Algarve, to the remarkable house my father had created for Madame Ghani and her family.

I have known Madame Ghani since I was a teenager. She and my mother had shared a great deal over the years — travels, adventures, endless games of canasta and, inevitably, the ups and downs of life with my father. Madame Ghani was his great friend. My mother, his long-suffering wife. Somehow, through it all, the two women had formed their own deep and enduring friendship.

I left early and drove the two hours south alone.

Walking back into that house was like walking straight into a memory. I have written about it here before: the rooms, the colours, the striking details my father had dreamed up, all of it so familiar.

Leila, Madame Ghani’s daughter, came out to hug me. She had come to my mother’s funeral, and there was something enormously comforting in seeing her.

She took me through the hall and led me into the pink library — really Madame Ghani’s card room — where my father had matched the walls to the startling pink lining of an envelope she once received, having a wallpaper specially printed to get the colour exactly right. Dark silk curtains, melon-coloured French chairs, regimented rows of pictures and books, and a great crystal chandelier.

Madame Ghani was sitting quietly in the corner.

I bent down and hugged her.

She looked at me rather sleepily and said, “Oh India sweetie, how is Mummy?”

For a moment, I couldn’t answer.

Madame Ghani is 95 now, and her mind has begun to drift. I realised that the news of my mother’s death had simply not stayed with her. And I could not bring myself to tell her again.

So instead I leant into her lovely soft cheek and whispered, “Mummy would be so pleased to know we are together.”

I stayed for lunch, surrounded by all those familiar rooms and all those ghosts, and then I got back into the car and drove north, knowing it was quite possible I would never return.

A few days later we were back in England, with barely enough time to unpack before beginning to pack Domino up for her university move.

I am happy for her. She is setting off into a new life — a new country, new friends, new experiences, a world that will be entirely her own.

And yet it feels like another small blow to my heart.

So soon after having to say goodbye to my mother, I find myself saying goodbye to my daughter.

Of course, they are entirely different goodbyes. One is final. The other is full of possibility. One closes a door; the other throws one wide open.

But the heart, inconveniently, does not always bother with such distinctions.

It simply knows that someone you love is no longer where they used to be.

But life, as we all know, moves on.

Perhaps rather conveniently, mine is moving at considerable speed. I have always been better at keeping busy than sitting still with things.

This week we are photographing my entire fall collection of table linens, and Jeanette and I continue to piece together the my book tour, with dates and dinners and conversations falling into place. Jeanette, who used to head up sales at India Hicks Inc, can make my wild world feel almost ordered and contained.

And then this weekend I leave for Ukraine to join the GEM team.

It is good to be reminded that alongside loss there is still curiosity, excitement, possibility, and an awful lot still to be done.

On September 17th, I will be at the Lanesborough in London. (Save a spot here)

It is a date that carries rather more emotion for me than I had anticipated, because the Lanesborough was the place where I last spoke publicly with my mother. I can still see her there. I can still hear her.

So returning without her will feel strange.

I will be talking about the new book — about entertaining, family, houses, and, of course, GEM. There is a chapter in the book about coming together for philanthropic causes, and how gathering people can be about much more than food and flowers.

So yes, Ukraine will be part of the conversation — not only the hardship, the courageous people, and the hope I have encountered there, but a taste of our most recent journey.

Hoping you might join me, either in London or beyond.

P.S For more details on any of these events please email info@indiahicks.com

Time is doing what everyone promises it will do. It is softening the sharpest edges. It is allowing ordinary life to creep back in. I can think of my mother without always feeling that sudden drop inside me.

But the same time that is healing me is also taking me further away from her.

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Answering them, as anyone who has ever been interviewed knows, means spending far too long wondering whether you sound too thoughtful, ridiculous, serious, or all three.

But the answers weren’t really published; they became intertwined with a larger story. So rather than leaving the answers languishing in the digital equivalent of a bottom drawer, I thought I would share them here: questions about ambition, legacy, motherhood, island life, work, and the curious business of growing into yourself.

And In honour of my mother’s love of books, I am going to ask David, my husband, also an insatiable reader, what he is reading from time to time.

Consider it the David Flint Wood Book Club. Membership is unnecessary, but opinions are welcome, preferably after reading the book…

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I am deeply touched by that. What I had not expected was how much sharing these thoughts would help me too.

Death, as we know, is the great leveller.

It does not care who we are, what we have, or where we live. It wounds us all. It reduces each of us, eventually, to the same helpless human state: someone we love is gone, and there is absolutely nothing we can do to bring them back.

That is not to say that every death and every ache is the same. It plainly is not.

My mother died at ninety-seven. It was the natural cycle of life, and an exceptionally long, rich and adventurous one. Her death was not a tragedy in the way that the death of a child is a tragedy, or the sudden loss of a young husband or wife. I am not grief-stricken. I am not tormented by the injustice of it.

I know how lucky I was. I know how lucky she was.

But how do we grieve? How do we mourn? Is grief shaped by character, by culture, by upbringing or by what we have been taught is acceptable to reveal?

I grieve quietly.

I try to appear strong for my family. I do not want them to feel responsible for my sadness.

I pull myself together. I get dressed. I make plans. I carry on.

Do men and women grieve differently? Is a man still made to feel weak if he cries? Do I secretly regard myself as weak when I cry?

Perhaps I do, a little.

Some people weep. Some organise. Some become very quiet. Some fill every available hour. Some need to talk endlessly, while others cannot bear to speak at all.

The contrast between the way we mourn in the Bahamas and the way we mourn in England could hardly be greater. In the Bahamas, grief is often loud, communal and visible. In England, it can feel almost instinctively restrained.

I felt that difference most sharply at my mother’s graveside.

Her wicker coffin was lowered slowly into the ground. Everyone stood in complete silence. The silence was so profound that the birds seemed to take over. For those few minutes, they were all we could hear.

A dear friend had travelled from the Bahamas to be with us. Afterwards, she told me that she had found that moment cripplingly difficult. She felt that only the immediate family should have been gathered around the grave, rather than the entire congregation standing there, witnessing such naked sorrow.

But she has lived most of her life in the Bahamas, where grief often has an entirely different sound.

The grief there is loud, physical and unashamed. People cry and wail. They raise their hands. They call out. Occasionally, someone faints. There is music and movement, prayer and sermons. After the service, a marching band leads the way to the graveside, brass instruments blazing, drums beating, mourners walking behind in the heat, some crying, some singing, some dancing, their grief carried out into the street for everyone to see.

Grief is not expected to make itself small or to apologise for taking up space. Bahamian traditions have long emphasised precisely this communal expression of sorrow, whilst in England we button grief up as firmly as our coats.

We stand stiffly beside the grave, looking straight ahead, trying not to become the person whose tears cause everyone else to cry. We swallow our feelings. We concentrate on the birds.

And yet part of me understands the urge to sway behind a band as it makes its way down Bay Street, to let the music carry some of the sorrow, to cry without embarrassment, and to allow grief to be seen rather than carefully contained.

Perhaps neither way is better. Perhaps we simply need different languages for unbearable things. What do you think?

Share INDIA HICKS. An Unexpected Journey.

So today I am sharing more from my mother’s commonplace books and this wonderful video of her, on her sofa at home, probably filmed after Sunday lunch one day. For a few precious moments, she is here again: her voice, her smile, her unmistakable spark.

How grateful I am to have these fragments of her still…

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I still ride as much as I can, wherever I can, whenever I can, because it’s good for my soul. I’ll be in Australia on a press trip and will somehow find a half-day in the schedule and someone with a horse, or I’ll be in Nashville and, by hook or by crook, I’ll seek out a new friend with a Tennessee Walker hidden away somewhere. I’ve trotted around the Egyptian pyramids at dawn; I’ve galloped, pregnant, along dry riverbeds in Rajasthan and ridden the Peruvian Paso horse in Peru, amazed by its unique four-step timing and gentle gait. I also once took an extraordinary adventure with my mother on horseback through Argentina.

Now living in the Bahamas, I’ll often go riding with my daughter Domino and our island horse whisperer, Marty. In the quiet season, we’ll sneak through gardens and around pools and down driveways, back onto the beach for a canter home through turquoise waters and along pink sands. (If you love Briland please consider a small donation towards the horses. It takes a lot to maintain them)

So, when Kathryn reached out to ask if I would write the foreword to ‘Horse Country’, I didn’t hesitate. ‘Horse Country’ gallops through the rugged romance of the American West, the polished tradition of English riding, and the effortless luxury of a life woven with leather, linen, and the thunder of hooves.

This book captures what it is to know and love horses—to feel them in your bones and in your heart.

But horses are only part of it.

I love most of the creatures that surround us at home on Harbour Island: spiders, sharks, dolphins, parrots, the gigantic money moths and starfish, even the weird swimming pigs. I am less enthusiastic about the flying cockroaches, the stinging ants, the occasional scorpion or the snake that ate our lovebirds… When the children were young, we gave each of them a lovebird and built a large aviary. One night, a snake found its way inside and ate all five of them. In an audacious move, the snake then fell asleep in their little nesting box.

Dachshunds, in particular, seem to be a hereditary condition in our family. My first dachshund was Bumble, given to me by my mother when I was ten. Today, we have Stretch, who is neurotic, demanding and deeply loved. He is useful around a pickleball court and can surf a gentle wave. He has also developed a particular talent for getting onto our bed. David says no. I say no. Stretch waits until I am asleep and then quietly renegotiates the arrangement.

Bond, our white Bahamian potcake, whom we found abandoned as a puppy, has appointed himself head of security. We have never needed to lock our house because Bond will raise the alarm at the slightest hint of an uninvited guest. (He also appears on the cover of my new book. Top billing for Bond.)

There are also twin cats, Kit and Kat, discovered as kittens in a bin at the end of our lane. We still don’t know who is Kit and who is Kat. And then there is Vincent, a tortoise from St Vincent. We found him when he was tiny and carried him home in a pencil case. He is now roughly the size of a small ottoman.

Then there was Jenga, a parrot with a crossed beak who never learnt to say anything rude, which was slightly disappointing.

My work with Global Empowerment Mission has taken me into disaster zones where the suffering of animals can be almost as difficult to witness as the devastation around them. In Ukraine and elsewhere, we have encountered abandoned dogs and cats carrying terrible fear and trauma. The hardest part is resisting the urge to bring every one of them home.

The Sunday Times recently came to ask me about this menagerie: the dachshunds, the potcake, the cats, the tortoise, the parrot and all the animals that have wandered through our family history.

They also asked what happens when our pets die. We bury them in a little graveyard beneath our yellow elder tree, on our sandy path. Each one has a gravestone, carved with an initial by one of us. We walk by them on our way to the beach most evenings, and in that way, they remain exactly where they always were—at the heart of our family.

Even when an ocean lay between us, I would still join her. I would FaceTime my brother in England, where he and my mother would be settling down to lunch in her Rex Whistler dining room.

Every Sunday, wherever in the world I happened to be, the three of us found our way back to that table.

It is these tiny rituals, these seemingly insignificant habits that once anchored the week, that have now been swept away that are undoing me.

My mother and brother, and indeed my husband, David, are all readers. Big thinkers and deep readers. From childhood, my mother kept careful notes on the books she had read. Her curiosity never dimmed, even as she grew older.

Much to the surprise of many, the final book she was reading was not Fifty Shades of Grey.

She had already read that.

At the age of 97, she had moved on to the second volume, E. L. James’s Fifty Shades Darker.

An excerpt from it was read at her funeral. It was a bold decision by my brother and brilliantly delivered by my niece Angelica. The congregation smiled at the thought of my 97-year-old mother reading it as her final book.

But my brother had understood exactly what he was doing. He wanted to capture her spirit: her humour, her appetite for life and the fact that she never lost her thirst for knowledge or her curiosity about what everyone else was talking about.

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I have been thinking quite a bit about books recently.

As I have mentioned, my own new book, Entertaining with a Side of Chaos, will be published by Rizzoli in September.

I have dedicated it to my five children, Wesley, Felix, Amory, Conrad and Domino, who can always be relied upon to provide the side of chaos.

I lead readers through dinners that spark debate by dessert, lazy lunches for two, late afternoon cocktails for two hundred, an English wedding, a Ukrainian christening, Bahamian Christmases and glimpses into other people’s clever corners. Along the way, I show how a few simple things, garden flowers, an improvised table and whatever is close at hand, can become something beautiful. And there are recipes too, none of them mine, all from our top banana, Claire.

Talking of recipes, I thought you might be amused by a note I found on my mother’s desk after she died:

Baked potato:

Oven on full.

One hour.

Prick.

Beside it was a carefully written list of what I assume she considered essential French words, although she spoke French fluently. Quite why one of them was harass, I cannot imagine. There was also a sweet list of family likes and dislikes from a while ago. It’s still no scallops for me.

Not long before she died, I asked my mother for a list of her favourite books, and in her increasingly weary hand, she carefully wrote down what came to mind. Interestingly, it did not include Fifty Shades Darker.

To learn more about my upcoming book or to place a preorder (means it arrives the second the book is released and of course supports the nervous author before publication ) click here.

And as always thank you for being here with me on Substack.

It has been 44 days since my mother died. I promise I will stop talking about this soon. Stop talking about grief and stop feeling like I know exactly where I am, and yet still feel completely lost.

Knowing I have to return to work, and to life, I launched Paradise Found this week. My new collection of linens, hand-block-printed, as always, with Pomegranate and their artisans in India.

We had filmed and photographed the collection in so many beautiful locations here on the island, intending to share them all a few months ago.

My son Amory filmed it all, capturing a collection rooted in our Bahamian life: barefoot, sun-drenched and a little windswept.

Of course, then everything stopped.

But the response to this week’s launch has been both exciting and enormously gratifying.

Amory’s clip of our home from above, where we have lived for 30 years, is quietly moving. I see the trees we planted, the rooms we added as each child was born, and the grass we have battled to keep alive. On the terrace, a table is laid for supper with the family. The dogs sleep in the shade, and David is probably inside shaking up a cocktail. It is our own small slice of paradise.

But even in these peaceful moments, it is impossible not to think of my friends whose lives are being lived against a very different backdrop.

Vitally recently sent me a photograph from Ukraine of new signs beside the road, warning of drone attacks. Imagine driving along an ordinary road, worrying that a drone may strike. Imagine that becoming part of daily life.

I am normally in Ukraine with GEM every January and every June. For some reason, this year I decided I would go in September and not June. Looking back, I can’t explain why I made that choice but thank God I did. Trying to return urgently to be with my mother from a Ukrainian humanitarian mission would have been terrifyingly complicated and certainly would not have allowed me those last days of being with her. Whether it was instinct, providence or simply extraordinary luck, that decision gave me the greatest gift of all.

When we returned from England to the Bahamas earlier than expected, I realised that I had lent our home to friends who needed a holiday. So, as not to displace them, David and I drove down Eleuthera, our neighbouring island, and had two very spoiling nights at The Cove. After feeling a little bruised and battered, this was quietly healing. I swam, slept and read Belle Burden’s Strangers, a shocking account of a marriage suddenly ending during Covid, but also a story of resilience and rebuilding.

I am also beginning to promote my own new book, Entertaining with a Side of Chaos. A rather irreverent portrait of entertaining, mixing beauty, spontaneity and joyful disorder. During a few recent press interviews, I have found myself apologising that, while the world feels so dangerously out of balance, I am discussing the absurd business of folding napkins prettily.

But gathering people around a table has value. Coming together does matter. One chapter in the book, actually titled “Coming Together,” is devoted to fundraising events and what can happen when people gather not only to eat and drink, but to help.

Perhaps a fluffy book about entertaining—with a chapter on fundraising—is okay. Perhaps pretty napkins and serious purpose are allowed to exist beside one another, because life, as we know, is rarely one thing at a time.

I am still adjusting to the absence of my mother, and to the loss of that quiet certainty that she was always there. But early this week, I felt my sadness beginning to change shape. It had not disappeared, but for the first time I felt I was carrying it, rather than being carried by it, helped, of course, by two moments of joy that seemed to let the light back in.

My son Felix launched the website for Idle Assembly, the clothing brand he first imagined as a teenager around our kitchen table and has steadily built into a serious limited-edition luxury denim business rooted in island subculture. His brother, Conrad, joined him just under a year ago. While Felix is the creative force, Conrad has become the engine of the business, driving forward all the essential work that makes the brand function.

(Their father founded Idle Assembly rum, these lads founded Idle Assembly clothing. A family idle by name, clearly not by nature.)

There will, inevitably, be friction. Brothers can collide in ways only family can. But there is also great strength in working with someone who knows your history, understands the family shorthand and saw the dream before it had a shape.

The launch marked an important moment, and it felt right for the brothers to celebrate it with David and me in Miami, at the World Cup, watching England play Norway.

Conrad, who interned at FIFA a few summers ago, was able to give me rather more insight than I might otherwise have had into the game unfolding on the pitch below us. And how utterly thrilling it all was.

For ninety minutes, thousands of strangers agree to feel the same thing. Flags become capes, songs become anthems, and people who may have nothing else in common throw their arms around one another when the ball crosses the line. The rolling cry of the Norwegians and the tribal chants of the English filled that stadium, each side carrying its history, and also its hope.

But for me, the most affecting sight was much closer to home.

There were my two sons, their arms around one another, caught up in the joy of England’s triumph. Earlier in the week, that same excitement had carried them into a new chapter with Idle Assembly, now it rose around them again in the thunder of the stadium.

And now I know this is how I will move forward, not by leaving grief behind, but by allowing joy to return beside it.

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In the middle of May, the meds went from the vet in London to our fridge in Oxfordshire, where Domino collected them in a cool bag, took them to a party in Chiswick, and handed them over to her brother Amory, who flew them to New York to give to me, where we were spending the weekend celebrating Felix’s 29^th Birthday and I could then take them back to the Bahamas.

But Mum fell, and I went from New York to England instead…..

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For my mother’s funeral, we only had five days.

Essentially, it was the same event. The same church. Several hundred people. Flowers. Orders of service. Music. Family logistics. People travelling from far and wide. Something to follow afterwards.

Only this time there was no big white dress, no first dance, no champagne glasses and no happy flutter of RSVPs.

Funerals are funny things to arrange. Funny in the strangest, bleakest, most bewildering way. Nobody really replies. Nobody quite knows whether they should come. You have no idea if twenty people will turn up or two hundred. And when someone has reached ninety-seven years old, most of their friends, and a good deal of their family, have already gone on ahead of them.

Then come the practical questions, which feel both ridiculous and impossible.

Do you serve booze, or does booze feel inappropriate? What time of day should it be?How do you let people know? Who must be telephoned first? Who will be offended if they are told too late?

And how, in the middle of grief, when your heart is thudding and your mind is fogged, and you have not slept, are you meant to remember whether anyone has ordered enough sandwiches?

At one point, in a moment of madness, I decided my mother should be taken by horse and carriage from her home to the church, clip-clopping through the little lanes she knew so well. She adored riding. She adored horses. It seemed the most perfect final send-off.

Until my brother pointed out that perhaps she might look less like Lady Pamela making her dignified last journey, and more like a Peaky Blinders gangster arriving at the church.

He was right, of course.

My mother had left an envelope with her last wishes. Not specifying horse or car, but quite clear on this: she wanted it extremely simple and uncomplicated. She did not want a sermon. She did not want a eulogy. And she certainly did not want a memorial service.

My brother, with great care and tenderness, put together a service of highs and lows (on the cover of the order of service he included sketches by my father for my mother’s curtains in her drawing room.) A very close and dear friend of my mother’s flew from Northern Ireland and read the Prayer of St Francis of Assisi. Her grandchildren each spoke a bidding prayer. My brother read some extraordinary letters he had found between my parents, letters full of humour and honesty and difficulty, giving such insight into two people trying to make a marriage work.

The church was full.

The choir sang beautifully.

In the chancel there were twelve ornately carved seats, presumably intended for clergy, though we decided they should be filled instead by my mother’s own devoted team. Those who had been with her longest, or most deeply. Alison and Shirley, her adored carers. Katie and Joyce, who had worked in the house for over thirty-five years. Susan, her dressmaker. And so on.

There was one chair left. The twelfth chair.

Who should sit there?

Alison had the bright suggestion that the chair should be taken by the chiropodist.

Of course. Who else should sit in the twelfth carved chair in the chancel, other than her chiropodist!

Several years ago, when one of the new carers was settling in and the doorbell rang, she asked Katie, “Who is that?”

“Oh, that’s the footman,” Katie explained.

“The footman?” the carer said, surprised. “Lady Pamela has a footman as well as a carer?”

My four boys and their cousin carried my mother, carefully, lovingly, on their shoulders, into the church. My brother, my sister and I followed behind up the gravel path. At the end of the service they carried my mother out for the committal. The sun shone as her grandsons lowered her down. “Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” said the priest slowly.

Everything became suddenly silent.

The church bell tolled.

The peacocks, next door, in Brightwell Park, called out.

The spring lambs in the field beyond baa-ed.

The birds sang. But the gathered congregation were silent as my mother was reunited with my father in the graveyard.

Grief is my new companion now.

It arrives unexpectedly, catching me off guard. I try to move the feeling around, massaging it like a muscle, trying to loosen it, trying to breathe through it. But grief has its own timetable. It is not interested in my plans. It will not be filed neatly away. It comes when it wants to.

There were a few moments these last weeks that I found unbearable.

I had sat and slept beside my mother, since her fall, only ever leaving her for a short walk in her garden, or to stand on the doorstep and watch the moon rise. But I realised I had hardly cried. Because she was still there. Her lovely, gentle, warm breath beside me. I could hold her at night. I could feel her in my arms.

But when the undertakers came to take her away, the tears came.

As they approached the bed, I clutched onto my mother and sobbed, desperate for her not to be taken from me. It was a child’s grief then, not an adult’s grief. Not dignified. Not composed. Just the raw, primitive panic of goodbye.

And then, a few days later, she returned.

She came home in her lovely wicker basket, covered in flowers from her garden. On top sat her chocolate bunny, a recent gift she had loved but could not bring herself to eat. There it was, placed like a small sentry guard, keeping watch.

And I felt at peace.

Mum was briefly home, lying in her hallway, while we dashed about making funeral arrangements all around her.

Then came the day of the funeral.

Watching her leave the Grove, her home, for the last time, I shuddered. But when she was lowered into the ground in the graveyard, my body shook uncontrollably. It was not crying exactly. It was something more physical than that. A deep bodily refusal to accept the finality of it.

But over the next few days I found peace again.

Each evening I went to her grave and lay beside her and listened as the birds quietened for the night. There was comfort in being close to her, even there. Especially there.

And then this week I had to say goodbye, because I was leaving England for a while.

So I lay beside her once more and thanked her for everything. It was hard to leave her.

I am carrying with me her leopard-print scarf, the one she always wore over her hair, and the cashmere blanket that kept her warm. They smell of her. I breathe them in every so often to feel her around me.

But I worry the smell will fade soon, so I ration myself: only a little sniff here and there.

As a wise friend who has experienced heavy tragedy told me, “You do not get over it. You just get on with it.”

So I am trying. One small step, one small sniff, one day at a time.

My phone rang.

It was my brother Ashley.

Our mother had fallen.

A serious fall. Were they right not to call an ambulance?

My mother had always been crystal clear about her wishes. She had absolutely no intention of ending her days in a hospital. Many years ago, she had signed a legal Do Not Resuscitate order and drawn up an Advance Decision, making it abundantly clear that she wanted no extraordinary measures taken to prolong her life. She had made her feelings known to family, doctors, and lawyers. Home was where she intended to stay.

Remember, this is the woman who, along with her sister, in their early eighties, went away on a cruise but not the fancy kind. They had to do the precautionary lifeboat drills along with all the other passengers: loud alarms, hustling through corridors, up onto the deck, finding your muster station, getting the life jacket over your recently “set” hair. The sisters looked at each other and agreed they would prefer just to stay in their cabins and go down with the ship rather than fight through that performance again.

“You’re doing exactly the right thing,” I told my brother.

I called a doctor we knew well, and the wheels of action immediately began to turn. Night nurses, painkillers, specialist beds, and carers all arrived to make my mother as comfortable as possible, with my brother managing it all.

“It’s the falls that get you in the end,” she told the doctor with a wry smile.

My mother possessed an extraordinary presence.

On first acquaintance, her warmth, wit and wisdom, enhanced by that rich, beautiful voice, revealed the legendary charm by which she lived and, indeed, by which she died.

When my cousin Tim came to see her, she made him laugh by reminding him of Mrs Thatcher visiting an old people’s home and stopping beside a patient’s bed.

“Do you know who I am?” she asked.

The patient looked at her kindly and said, “No, dear, but if you ask Matron, she’ll tell you.”

A few days after her fall, my mother woke one morning and said to my brother and me, “I apologise for the unconscionable amount of time I’m taking to die,” a reference to King Charles II, who famously said the same thing on his deathbed.

“But I’m very glad I don’t have the Privy Council here,” she continued.

But she did have, every day for ten days, a member of the family come to see her. They came to sit beside her, to hold her hand, to tell her how much they loved her. And she, in turn, would tell them one of her memories, or one of her amusing anecdotes. She was still, even then, the hostess in her own room.

Another niece came, and my mother remembered another story that made us laugh.

A famously eccentric, socially unfiltered wife of one of Queen Victoria’s prime ministers had arrived at a court event dressed in a manner not quite suited to royal expectation. One of the ladies-in-waiting noticed, with horror, that she had a shawl wrapped around her shoulders.

“Oh, you know how much Her Majesty dislikes shawls,” she whispered. “May I take it from you?”

“Shawl? Shawl?” said the Prime Minister’s wife, looking surprised. “Oh. That’s where I’ve put my skirt.”

There was one moment when the special air mattress my mother had been given to make her more comfortable began to leak. In a panic, we called the company, and they arrived with a couple of strong, heavily tattooed, slightly dubious-looking men. Soon the room was full: the carers, the new nurse, the mattress men, my brother, my son, my husband and me, all gathered around the bed to help move my mother while the mattress was mended.

My mother looked up and said, “Can I be introduced to everyone?”

Even at the edge of life, manners had not deserted her.

She made the hefty men laugh when she also said, “Has anyone been eating my Toblerone?” which seemed an entirely reasonable question to all of us.

One afternoon, after a very long day and another sleepless night, I went for a walk, leaving her with her much-adored carer, Alison. I walked through the gardens she loved so much, under the full green canopy of summer leaves, while the deer and muntjacs moved quietly through the grass, and red kites circled and soared in the summer sky above, their wings tilting silently on the warm air, entirely untroubled by human sorrow.

By then my mother was fading. When I came back, I leaned over her bed and whispered in her ear, “What have you been up to since I was gone?”

Suddenly her eyes opened.

“I’m wondering the same thing,” she said.

Her hairdresser of nearly forty years, from the little local town, came to say goodbye. Now she was asleep most of the time. He did not linger, only long enough to mutter that the new hairdresser, who had taken over since his retirement, was NOT doing a good job. He was particularly disapproving of her hair colour.

On the Friday morning, just two weeks after her fall, I went down to the kitchen to make a cup of tea. While the kettle boiled, I stepped outside the quiet house and wandered a little way down the drive. Out of the stillness, from one of the great oak trees, a large white owl appeared and took flight, moving across the fields into the sunshine. I turned back to the house, went straight upstairs, and found that my mother had taken her last breath.

How threadbare language feels when faced with the deepest sorrow. How meagre words are when trying to convey the desolation, the emptiness at the heart that I feel now my mother is gone.

But there is comfort, too, in knowing that her ending was exactly as she would have wished: at home, held in love, and spared everything she had so clearly refused.

Perched high above the Dnipro River, wit…

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As the BBC wrote at the news of her death, she “moved among kings and queens with ease yet remained profoundly unspoilt,”. She had no time for self-importance. While history surrounded her from birth, she wore it lightly. The ordinary details of human life interested her infinitely more than grandeur ever did.

Her memory was astonishing. She could recall amusing family stories, well-worn limericks and ridiculous riddles, but also fascinating conversations and tiny details from decades earlier with breathtaking precision. She continued to answer every letter and card sent to her, replying in her beautiful, unmistakable handwriting.

She was also an insatiable reader. Her home overflowed with books. From childhood onwards she kept meticulous lists of every book she finished, recording them carefully until her reading life became a kind of autobiography. Guests who visited her more recently were often surprised, and occasionally scandalised, to find Fifty Shades of Grey resting beside her armchair. At ninety-seven my mother remained gloriously curious about absolutely everything.

During her final days, my brother Ashley sat beside her bed with his daughters and read aloud from those little books with their lists: title, author, and then my mother’s own verdict beside each one. “Good.” “Quite good.” “Disappointing.” Occasionally something rather more withering. As she lay there, she smiled, remembering them all.

For those fortunate enough to sit beside her, it often felt like sitting beside living history—except infinitely warmer and more human than history can ever appear on the page. She had known Gandhi, Haile Selassie, Jackie Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. She travelled with Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip during the Commonwealth Tour of 1951 and stood beside them in Kenya when news arrived that King George VI had died, becoming the first person to curtsey to the new Queen.

She lived among dazzling people and extraordinary privilege, yet remained profoundly grounded, possessing an instinctive understanding that life was never really about oneself, but about how one behaved towards others. Two principles framed her life: loyalty and duty. Those twin virtues anchored her through almost a century. Inspired first by her parents, and later by the example of the Queen, she developed an unwavering sense of service that remained with her throughout her life.

But despite her privileged upbringing, there were episodes from her childhood that today would leave most of us breathless with anxiety. On one occasion she was left in a hotel with her sister and nanny for what was meant to be a few days and did not see her mother again for months. During the war she was sent to America and spent nearly a year separated from her parents, uncertain at times if they were even alive.

At seventeen, after arriving in India when her father became the last Viceroy, she was sent straight to work in medical camps outside Delhi helping those displaced by Partition.

During this time she took on far more responsibility than would normally be expected of a girl just finding her feet in the adult world, witnessing unimaginable suffering in the makeshift clinics where she worked, all the while taking Hindustani lessons in order to better communicate with those around her.

As children, did we fully understand the reserves of strength she possessed? Perhaps not until the murder of her beloved father, Lord Mountbatten, in 1979—a tragedy that would have permanently hardened many people. I was only eleven, too numb and too young, perhaps, to realise that my mother had suddenly found herself almost entirely alone. In the days following the bomb, the people she loved most, the heartbeat of her life, were either dead or lying critically injured in hospital. The pain she must have felt does not bear thinking about. Yet she never faltered.

Only a short while later came financial difficulties that forced the sale of the family home, followed by the devastating diagnosis of breast cancer. Through all of this, and through much weightier darkness, my mother lived by the advice her cousin Prince Philip once offered: “Look up, look out, say less, and do more.”

My mother never learnt to cook. Although on one occasion tried to prepare supper for her sister and Prince Philip. She read the instructions on a tin of spaghetti which advised: “Place contents in boiling water.” Taking this literally, she lowered the unopened tin directly into the saucepan and returned to the sitting room. A short while later a loud explosion sent everyone racing back to the kitchen, where spaghetti decorated the ceiling.

“Well,” remarked Prince Philip, surveying the scene, “at least we know it’s cooked.”

Cooking may not have been her strength, but manners certainly were.

Years after my father died, I attended an event in North America where two women introduced themselves and told me they had once been invited to visit him at his Oxfordshire home. Arriving on the appointed day, they knocked on the front door and my mother appeared.

“We’ve come to see David Hicks,” they explained.

“You’ve just missed him,” she replied. “He died earlier this morning” the ladies understandably looked appalled “But you’ve come all this way, so you must come in for tea.” my mother insisted.

The world will remember Lady Pamela Hicks for the history she witnessed and the people she knew.

We will remember how she made us feel.

And though her voice is now absent, her presence remains woven through our lives—in our values, our stories, our memories and our children.

How fortunate we were that she was ours. How privileged we were to be loved by her. And how impossible it is to imagine this world without her in it.

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Thirty-five guests sounds so manageable. Intimate. Relaxed. One imagines barefoot ease and a few bottles of rosé chilling quietly in the background. What it actually means is that you will spend six days discussing extension cords, soup ingredients, weather radar, bamboo engineering and the emotional stability of lantern batteries.

This particular wedding felt very special to me. My friend, Michael, a humanitarian who has spent years making the world a better place, with Global Empowerment Mission, was marrying his Ukrainian love, Alina, who has lived through more than most of us can imagine. There was something deeply moving about the idea of creating a moment of beauty and calm for them on our tiny tropical island.

On Monday, we began. Endless amounts of candles were placed into tiny containers filled with pink sand from the beach. Every lighter was tested and charged. Wedding tablecloths, napkins and seat covers were counted and checked. They had arrived from India just in time, a gift from Pomegranate. The print, Desert Rose, had been designed by my son Felix and chosen because the flower blooms all over the island. (Obviously when most people host a wedding, they casually decide to design their own linens!)

We discussed the construction of the wedding arch for the beach. Weeks earlier, I had dragged home two giant bamboo branches that had washed ashore because I knew I wanted the arch to feel wild, romantic and castaway-ish.

We quickly repainted the back gate where guests would enter. The rain washed it off. We started again. We found the plywood stored beneath the house to extend the dining tables so flower arrangements could run down the middle.

I asked Claire, our Top Banana, to confirm the menu. She reminded me, rather impatiently, that the boat had not yet arrived, meaning the leeks had not yet arrived, meaning the vichyssoise soup might not arrive either.

On Thursday, the boat came in, the leeks arrived and civilisation was restored. I was then able to print out the menus. I like a printed menu. I like an invitation. I like a place card.

Friday brought real weather panic. We had several days of tropical rain and suddenly the roof of our Indian canvas tent sank, along with my heart. We needed a second tent. It felt unfair to ask guests who had flown across the world in celebration of love and resilience to also participate in a wet survival exercise. We borrowed one from our friends and wedding pros on The Other Side.

Folding bamboo chairs came out of storage. Lighting went up. Extra champagne glasses had to be hired. I entertain enthusiastically, but not at the level of thirty-five simultaneous coupes.

Then Saturday arrived.

By 6am I was encouraging the silk flowers from Amazon, not The Amazon, the other Amazon, to look less emotionally exhausted. White vacuum-sealed gauze fabric was also unpacked. I had carried all this in hand luggage on my last trip, along with David’s Cadbury chocolate.

Linda arrived to help. Every woman needs a soulmate. Some people find theirs romantically. I found mine in event logistics. Linda and I have now entered the stage of life where our greatest intimacy is silently understanding how a table should be laid without needing to discuss it.

We carried the bamboo down to the beach to erect the arch while dark clouds circled overhead and the wind attempted to relocate us to Cuba.

We clipped night blooming jasmine from around the island lanes. I think of this as community pruning. A box of fresh roses from JJ arrived by boat from Nassau, another gift for the bride and groom. Linda and I shaped them into a simple bouquet for Alina.

We set one place setting perfectly and then the helping hands copied it thirty four more times. Paper fans were laid out by each plate to stop our guests from quietly melting in the anticipated warmth.

Beach chairs were delivered to the sand. Michael rolled out the carpet his Ukrainian bride would walk down.

I like evenings to unfold in chapters. Guests first gathered under the trees in the back garden with welcome drinks and sandy feet. Then everyone moved slowly down the steps to the beach, where the gauze and flowers on the arch blew softly in the wind that had, mercifully, calmed.

Everything felt intimate, emotional and unhurried. Soft around the edges.

Everything also felt personal. The linens. The candles held in sand from the beach. Marissa, our housekeeper, made the wedding cake by hand. Linda and I decorated it with satin ribbons and silk flowers. Claire cooked for thirty-five people in our kitchen. Calvin and Angie, who have been with us for many years, helped run the evening and my friend Sophia took the photographs.

The lights came on just as dusk fell and we wandered back up the path, dipping below low branches, heels carried in hand. At the house, drinks were poured and music drifted through the garden.

Dinner was emotional. There were tears of happiness but also tears of sadness. Many guests had lived through loss, displacement, uncertainty and war. We toasted not only the couple, but peace itself.

Then the sound of drums began rising up the driveway through the darkness.

We had organised a small Junkanoo group. Nothing gets people onto their feet faster than the deep sound of island cowbells and drums moving through the night air. Suddenly the terrace was full of energy and dancing.

Afterwards, Eugene Khmara sat at the keyboard and played while his wife, Daria Kovtun, sang. We clapped and cheered.

The cake was cut. Champagne was drunk. The candles burnt out. Michael and Alina were truly married.

A few tips we learnt along the way:

Make people move throughout the evening.
A wedding feels far more magical when it unfolds in chapters. Drinks in one place, dinner somewhere else, dancing somewhere unexpected.

Do not underestimate ice.
Especially in the tropics. Warm champagne destroys morale faster than rain.

Sometimes lighting matters more than flowers.
People will forgive almost anything if candlelight is flattering enough. Put lights in trees. Line pathways. Be sure to test them the night before, unless you want guests lost in the dark quietly calling for help.

A wedding should reflect where you are.
Use what exists naturally around you. We used washed up bamboo, jasmine from the roadside and pink sand from the beach. It made everything feel rooted to the island instead of imported from a Pinterest board.

You need one excellent person beside you.
A Linda. A logistical soulmate. Someone who can look at you across a collapsing tablecloth and understand immediately what must be done.

People remember feeling, not perfection.
Nobody cared if the gauze was slightly crooked or if the wind nearly carried away the arch. They remembered the drums, the speeches, the singing, the warmth and the intimacy.

Don’t be fooled. Small weddings are not necessarily easier.
In many ways they are harder, because every detail is noticed. But they are also infinitely more personal. Every guest becomes part of the fabric of the evening rather than simply attending it.

Do not wait for life to become less complicated before gathering people together.
The world feels heavy at the moment. Which is precisely why beauty, music, candlelight, friendship and dancing barefoot under the stars matter so much.

I cannot begin to imagine what it must feel like to raise a child in a country at war. To wake each morning calculating safety, warmth, food, electricity, hope. To try and keep a small person entertained and reassured while the larger world behaves incomprehensibly. And in all of this was I being enough of a godparent?

(I wrote about this Christening in Ukraine here)

And then I found myself wondering: what exactly is a good godparent?

I have thirteen Godchildren. Flattering and faintly alarming. Although there comes a point where one slightly wants to announce a formal retirement from godparenting “Due to emotional overbooking, India regrets she is unable to take on further spiritual dependents.”

But of course, one never says no.

Particularly not when a child is born during war. Then the request feels less ceremonial and more profound. Almost like being entrusted with a fragment of someone else’s hope.

Traditionally, godparents existed to guide a child spiritually should anything happen to the parents. In practice, I think the role has evolved into something both vaguer and more meaningful. A godparent becomes part witness, part safety net, part storyteller, part extra adult standing slightly outside the immediate machinery of parenting.

I had five godparents myself. Some were excellent. Some entirely useless.

One I met only once as a child, at his enormous estate in England. I remember being ushered into a dark library where he sat behind an immense leather desk looking less like a duke and amore like a disappointed headmaster. He opened a drawer, removed a vast cheque book, took out an ink pen and wrote me a cheque for one hundred pounds.

At the age of nine, this appeared to me to be roughly equivalent to the GDP of a small nation.

I never saw him again.

Other godparents were quieter, steadier figures. They appeared at christenings and confirmations. They remembered birthdays and Christmases. They asked questions. They showed up consistently, if not dramatically.

When David and I chose godparents for our own children, we didn’t choose only close friends. We chose people from different worlds, different beliefs, different backgrounds. We had one godparent who was Buddist, and before the christening in our small traditional English church we felt obliged to mention this to the priest beforehand, slightly nervously.

He did not bat an eyelid.

I loved him for that.

My mother has always spoken passionately about the importance of understanding other faiths, other cultures, other ways of seeing the world. Not simply tolerating difference, but living alongside it with generosity and curiosity. Raising children to understand that goodness exists everywhere, and that difference is not something to fear.

Perhaps that too is part of godparenting.

Not simply buying silver mugs or remembering birthdays, although both are admirable qualities.

But helping enlarge a child’s understanding of the world.

Do children actually need perfect godparents? Perhaps they simply need present ones. Adults who notice them. Adults who remember who they are becoming.

Still, when I think of my tiny godson in Ukraine today, turning three years old amidst circumstances none of us would choose, the role suddenly feels less decorative and more ancient. More necessary.

To become a godmother to a child born into uncertainty feels like saying:

Your life matters to people beyond your immediate family. Beyond your country. Beyond this moment. And perhaps that, in the end, is the real role of a godparent. To quietly remind a child, throughout their life, that they are not alone in the world.

Happy birthday, Zakhar.

And Thank you JP Lindsley, the American journalist in Kyiv, who deliveries daily, stories from inside Ukraine, in clear and human terms and recently included me in his ‘Voices of the Fight’

JP Lindsley | Under Fire News

“The Entire War Distilled Into One Quiet Exchange”

As Russian missiles and drones fall around her, the goddaughter of Charles III distributes the quiet essentials of survival…

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4 months ago · 9 likes · 1 comment · JP Lindsley

I’ve always believed that entertaining, for me, is about inviting people into somewhere that feels loved and lived in.

What I do, what I’ve always done, is about living well. Not extravagantly or flawlessly, but fully. I’ve lived a life shaped by heritage and softened by salt air. I’ve gathered people together, for breakfasts, lunches, teas and dinners. Tables for two or a hundred and two.

My last entertaining book was written seven years ago, and in that time I’ve learnt rather a lot. Not just the obvious things, like who to invite and, perhaps more importantly, who not to invite, but the subtler arrangement of a good gathering, so I am thrilled to say my new book ‘ENTERTAINING, WITH A SIDE OF CHAOS’ will be published in September.

Over the course of these past years I’ve learnt which conversations to gently steer away from, politics and religion of course, but also cryptocurrency, anyone’s colon cleanse, and the subject of children’s schools. I’ve learnt that timing is everything: when to serve, when to clear, when to top up a glass, and crucially, when to let a moment linger.

And then there are the less discussed but utterly essential skills, like how to encourage guests to leave.

This book is a celebration of that theatre, a patchwork of moments, some candlelit and choreographed, some held together with napkin rings and hope. Some grand, some simple. Place cards written in a hurry, cutlery laid with care, tablescapes inspired by coconuts and coral, roses and rope, all served with a side of chaos.

A celebration of welcome and warmth, paired when necessary with the quiet art of a perfectly timed goodbye.

Pre-order the book now (Click the underlined) so it lands on your doorstep before anyone else gets their mitts on it, and as a thank you for sticking with me here, I’m giving you early access to my new rug collection too, so you can see it first, order it first, receive it first, and ideally be stretched out on it reading the book while everyone else is still waiting.

LOOM and CO EARLY ACCESS (Click the underlined)

In my mother’s case, she has tasted everything, seen everything, met almost everyone worth meeting, and travelled just about everywhere worth going. There is very little left to wrap.

So this year, I gave her two things: myself, home for two nearly uninterrupted weeks, and a magic show….

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Clever Claire popped down to the hardware store and found the last, or possibly only, one available, literally the kind clowns go beep-beep with. Tied on with a piece of string to the handlebars, the vehicle passed its test. Matters became slightly more complicated when Claire was caught using the same horn for our other quad bikes.

On Saturday, Conrad and Felix hosted a pop up at the Sugar Mill, the boutique I share with Linda, for their clothing brand, Idle Assembly. The invitation announced the pop up would run from 5–9pm.

9pm? Who would be shopping on Harbour Island at that hour, I asked in that rather annoying motherly way. Clearly, I was wrong. The backyard heaved with shoppers, from our tiniest two-year-old guest to Stretch.

On Sunday, we received the news that the boat from Nassau had not yet set sail. My heart sank. My knees wobbled. My palms got a little sweaty. Normally, I would not panic. We can cope without milk, but I could not cope without my rugs, which had arrived from India into Nassau and been loaded onto this boat bound for Harbour Island.

These rugs are my latest collaborative project. I know, I know, everyone seems to be collaborating with everyone these days, often at such speed one wonders if they have actually met. I tend to do things rather differently. I choose carefully, drawn to projects that are women-run or artisanally led, things with a story and the reassuring sense that someone, somewhere, has actually made something with their hands.

Loom & Co are all that. But if I am honest, what truly won me over was not just the idea of one-of-a-kind rugs, handmade in India by third-generation weavers, woven to last a lifetime; it was the delight of doing it all with bananas. BANANAS!

Abaca comes from the fibre of a banana plant and sits somewhere between jute and sisal, but with rather more personality, tough enough for ropes that cross oceans, yet refined enough to sit quietly under a dining table. It turns out to be a wonderful material for rugs. It holds its shape without collapsing into a sulk and is perfectly suited to climates that do not take kindly to anything too precious. It is also naturally sustainable, derived from a fast-growing plant that regenerates quickly, requires minimal intervention, and leaves a relatively light environmental footprint.

Of course, while bananas may grow quickly, any decent design process does not. Months of meetings, concepts, sampling, decision-making, and commercial considerations. It is not a neat, elegant progression, but something closer to an unhinged rhythm of adjustments and reconsiderations, with a great deal of standing about, head tilted, saying, “Yes… no… almost…”

And then comes the shooting of what we used to call the campaign, a word that now feels a bit Mad Men-ish, having been replaced by the slightly confusing “drop,” “launch,” “rollout,” or even a “moment.” Whatever one chooses to call it, it is an entire production.

I’m an old-fashioned sortta girl. I like to map my “drop” on a pin board, charting where each shot should be, how it should feel, what story it should tell, and what one hopes the audience might see and feel. Then comes the assembling of photographer, videographer, stylist, and models, in my case, often the four-legged variety, followed by the choreography of nature herself, the right light, the right tide, the right wind, and, sometimes, even the moon. By the time a “drop” looks effortless, an absurd amount of effort has gone into making it so.

You can then imagine why my knees wobbled when we heard the boat had been delayed by winds, preventing it from crossing the Devil’s Backbone, a stretch of water at the top of Eleuthera that sounds dramatic and behaves accordingly, while I had a full team waiting on the ground, twiddling their thumbs.

And then, just in the nick of time, the wind died, the boat docked, and Claire charmed our rugs out of customs just as the light slipped rather beautifully away, but not before we caught it all on camera.

Three long days of filming followed.

Last night I flew to England in order to end the week by giving a talk about “Lady Pamela.” The only complication being that Lady Pamela herself decided to come along and, on realising the talk was about her, was not entirely thrilled. The audience, on the other hand, were utterly delighted that the subject of the talk was sitting quietly among them.

All this really, just to say, I have a collection of rugs for Loom & Co, launching on May 7th (preview and early access for my subscribers on May 1st) Some rugs made from wool, many made from bananas.