Queen Elizabeth's Untold Bond with Her Lady-in-Waiting, Lady Pamela Hicks: 'A Remarkable Generation of Women' (Exclusive)

"My mother would say, 'You’re there to have a giggle,'" India Hicks tells PEOPLE of her mother, Lady Pamela Hicks, and her role as the late Queen's lady-in-waiting

Seemingly carefree, two young women are photographed smiling excitedly, the watching crowds a blur, as their open car hurtles past in the sunshine of Australia in 1954.

Captured in the image is the late Queen Elizabeth and her lady-in-waiting, Lady Pamela Hicks, loyally by her side as the royal navigated her new role on the world stage. Queen Elizabeth had taken the throne just two years prior.

The candid shot is included in a charming new visual biography by India Hicks, the daughter of Pamela, now 95. Lady Pamela tells the story of the woman who grew up the daughter of the famed Lord Louis Mountbatten, was a childhood friend of the then Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret, was asked to be a bridesmaid at Elizabeth’s wedding to Prince Philip in 1947 and was by her side when she heard that her father King George VI had suddenly died in February 1952, thrusting her onto the throne at just 25 years old.

India Hicks, an entrepreneur, former model and writer (who was also a royal bridesmaid to Princess Diana when she married Hicks’ godfather Prince Charles in 1981), has used old pictures, diary entries, royal memorabilia and conversations with her mother to piece her life story together.

“I found the picture among her things," she tells PEOPLE. "I imagine a member of the royal party snapped it. It is a brilliant example of what a lady-in-waiting does."

“They’re there to represent the Queen before she comes down for dinner, at a reception to know exactly who the most senior person in the room is or to receive a bouquet. And, as my mum used to say, ‘We don’t want a crumpled Queen,’ ” Hicks says.

The term "lady-in-waiting" isn't used in royal parlance anymore, the title has been replaced by "companion" instead.

“But really — as Queen Camilla has now coined the term — it is a companion," Hicks adds. "That photograph absolutely shows the companionship between these two women. My mother would say, 'You’re there to have a giggle,' and that photograph captures that moment.”

At the heart of Lady Pamela’s story is the late Queen. “In one of the multiple scrapbook pages you see [a] diary [entry] and it says, ‘Tea at Buckingham Palace’ in her tiny childish writing," Hicks says. "They played horses and riders together — it’s very funny, [then Princess Elizabeth] was always the rider and Princess Margaret always the horse, and my mother was always the horse and her older sister the rider. So they were very familiar with each other."

Also featured in the book is a moment captured on Lady Pamela’s and Princess Elizabeth’s joint birthday party in Malta in 1950 (where Elizabeth and Philip, who was serving as a naval officer, lived in India’s grandparents’ home Villa Guardamangia). “That photograph of them dancing together is particularly wonderful," Hicks says. "The romance of it, with Prince Philip looking across."

That time in Malta is often portrayed as a perfect time for the young married couple to be themselves away from the pressure of a frontline royal life. “My grandmother famously said that when [Elizabeth] left, it was like taking a little bird and putting it back inside a gilded cage and locking it,” Hicks says.

Lady Pamela was also close by and saw a change in Elizabeth when the most momentous news of the royal's life happened on Feb. 6, 1952, the day her father King George VI died. The princess was accompanied by Lady Pamela and others on safari in Kenya at the time. “My mum very much describes how the Queen went up the ladder [a princess] and came down as a Queen," Hicks says of Treetops, where the royal party was staying on the visit. "She very much remembers a change then. But whether that was the Queen in mourning or the seriousness of the occasion, she felt a change happen.”

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She adds, “Interestingly, that generation and that upbringing and some of those girls were quite serious. We had a very serious Queen and, thank goodness, she was the one by happenstance who inherited the throne.”

‘She was the right person, she took things very seriously, took her faith very seriously. But she had a great sense of humor.”

Included among the mementos of a full life is a letter written by the then Princess Elizabeth from Balmoral Castle to India, where Lady Pamela was living with her parents at the time, as her father Lord Mountbatten was Viceroy of India. It referred to her acceptance of the invitation to be a bridesmaid at Elizabeth's wedding to Philip in 1947, and asked for Pamela’s dress measurements as she wasn’t going to be in London.

“Every other bridesmaid had had their dress fittings, which is always part of the process and the general excitement and sharing of that time and experience. My mum had none of that,” Hicks says. “But she always says that Norman Hartnell [Elizabeth's wedding dress designer] was such a brilliant couturier that it fitted perfectly.”

In the picture on the balcony on Elizabeth and Philip's wedding day in November 1947, Lady Pamela might have looked very serious, but, India says, “the one thing she remembers is the crowds below singing 'All the Nice Girls Love a Sailor.' Every young woman was madly in love with Prince Philip.”

Years later, in 1979, her family was thrust into the headlines for much more tragic reason — the assassination of her grandfather, Lord Mountbatten, who was killed by an IRA bomb that August. Three others also died in the attack, which came at one of the bloodiest times in the area's tumultuous history. A maternal of Prince Philip, King Charles called Mountbatten "the grandfather I never had" in a 2015 speech.

“It was very public, but how it was dealt with was very private," Hicks says of her grandfather's murder. "How she dealt with it needed to be told."

“The lesson was about forgiveness and not letting bitterness ruin or erode at your life," she adds. "My aunt was very strong about that, that we will not let this affect the way we are. There is a very important lesson there about moving forward and looking to the future.”

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Hicks says that she wrote the book with her mother to illustrate the “remarkable” woman, whose life, like Elizabeth’s, spans almost a century. (Queen Elizabeth died at 96 years old on Sept. 8, 2022.)

“It is a disappearing world of people who do put duty and service above family, who are incredibly loyal and have a quiet introspection and think that curiosity leads to a broader mind, and who believe that manners are important,” she says. “But also have a sense of fun and sense of adventure.”

Asked if she has inherited some of that sense of duty, Hicks says "it's hard to say," but is set to visit Ukraine with Global Empowerment Mission in December for the latest of her eight trips since the invasion that took place in spring 2023.

Her mother, like her famous friend Queen Elizabeth, also had to be tough to cope in what was a man's world. A graphic illustration comes in the new book in the form of a picture on the deck of HMS Glasgow in May 1954, where the Queen and Lady Pamela were surrounded by dozens of men.

"I know how much I struggled when I sat at a board table [to] be respected. Can you imagine as a young Queen?" Hicks says. "It must have been quite difficult as women to find their voice in those times. They’re a remarkable generation of women.”

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