EDEN CONFIDENTIAL: King Charles’s goddaughter India Hicks branches out with uninhibited holiday snap in the Bahamas
India is also branching out into swimwear… and she’s hoping for a lot of exposure!
It’s where her godfather, King Charles, honeymooned with Princess Diana – but India Hicks seemed to have Windermere Island all to herself this Easter, judging by this uninhibited photo, where she lies topless on a branch.
“Luckily, I just spent a few days on the island of my youth,” says India.
Her parents, Earl Mountbatten’s youngest daughter, Lady Pamela Hicks, and interior designer David Hicks, built Savannah House on Windermere in 1967 – often described as the Bahamas’ best-kept secret.
Located on a hill, the cubist building offers views of the Atlantic Ocean on one side and still turquoise water on the other.
India Hicks (pictured) in her bikini on Windermere Island in the Bahamas this Easter
India, the daughter of Lady Pamela Hicks and interior designer David Hicks, when she appeared on Lorraine in 2021
But every bit of Windermere is bliss, according to India, 56, who praises its “freedom and privacy” – qualities she admits she has taken full advantage of.
“I’ve just spent a few months developing a swimwear collection,” she says, adding that the new range will provide “a lot more coverage than I have now.”
Property ladder star Sarah Beeny was a self-confessed city girl who lived in London for thirty years before making the move to a 220-acre former farm in Somerset in 2019.
Now she and her husband, artist Graham Swift, plan to open their country to the next generation. “We’re building a TV and film studio and an arts centre, to try to engage young people in alternative careers,” she tells me at a party in London. ‘It’s very cool. I want the funkiest carpets.’
Another school story to make you run a mile
Further memories of Cheam, the preparatory school that Prince Philip and King Charles attended, come to me after my revelation that it once employed a matron who had a closer relationship with the boys than their parents could have imagined. “In our first week the entire dormitory of seven and eight year olds were beaten standing by their beds by the headmaster,” an old boy from Cheam tells me, remembering the early 1970s.
Prince Phillip (pictured) and King Charles both attended prep school in Surrey
The boys’ crime? “Running around the dorm.” But word reached one of Cheam’s governors. “At the end of the school year the director was gone,” adds the Cheam alumnus.
“After that it was a good-natured and very happy place.”
It seems artificial intelligence is no match for the country’s most famous lexicographer, Susie Dent.
The Countdown star was left unimpressed after putting AI to the test.
“I asked AI to give me some choice 17th-century insults and it came back with much more recent examples,” she says, adding: “Then I found myself correcting it… There’s still a long way to go to go.’
Model Freya monkeys with gorillas in her father’s wildlife park
Like most twenty-somethings, Freya Aspinall is fixated on the object of her affection, but unlike her counterparts, she prefers to give her love to a gorilla.
In a video shared online, the model kisses the lips of Tambabi, one of the gorillas at her father Damian’s wildlife park in Kent.
Freya Aspinall (pictured) with one of the gorillas in her father’s game park
In a video shared online, the model kisses the lips of Tambabi, one of the gorillas at her father Damian’s wildlife park in Kent.
“She is so gentle and loving,” says Freya, 20, daughter of actress Donna Air. Their bond goes back to my childhood: ‘I have known this group of gorillas all my life and have developed a completely natural relationship with them.’
Is that you, Lady Mary Crawley? After showcasing her musical talents when she once sang in Downton Abbey, Michelle Dockery, 42, has now struck a chord with viewers in her debut as Estella, an alcoholic mother and singer, in the BBC drama This Town.
Michelle Dockery, 42, in her debut as Estella in BBC drama This Town
Michelle Dockery rose to fame for her role as Lady Mary Crawley in the award-winning series Downton Abbey
Written by Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight, the six-part series follows the rise of a band in the 1980s amid social unrest in Birmingham.
“You see her sober and you see her drinking,” Ms Dockery says of her character at a screening at BFI Southbank in London. “So I just delved into it depending on what stage she was at in terms of her addiction.”