For Queen Elizabeth, it was to be a relaxing, wildlife-watching stop in Kenya during what was set to be a long tour while her ailing father, King George VI, rested back home in England.
But everything changed on February 6, 1952, when George died of a blood clot — making his direct heir and elder daughter, Elizabeth, the new monarch at age 25.
Lady Pamela Hicks, a cousin of Elizabeth’s husband Prince Philip and one of the couple’s bridesmaids, was a witness to history during that fateful trip.
“My mother remembered very clearly that when she heard the news, she paced up and down, up and down with Philip and the ladies-in-waiting and the private secretary,” Lady Pamela’s daughter India Hicks, an entrepreneur and the founder of lifestyle site IndiaHicks.com, tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue. The moment is gaining renewed attention thanks to the success of the hit Netflix series The Crown.
“Finally when the Queen had gathered herself, she said, ‘I’m so sorry, but we are going to have to go back to England,’ ” says Hicks. “That was so indicative of the Queen that she would have apologized for something like that. They all said, ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ ”
She adds, “My mother gave her a hug and suddenly remembered, ‘This is my queen,’ and dropped into a deep curtsy.”
The scene in The Crown when a wild elephant is faced down by a bold Philip didn’t happen, Hicks says. But it was a dramatic scene, typical of series creator Peter Morgan, who also memorably wrote about a magnificent stag that transfixes a later-in-life imagining of Elizabeth in his 2006 Oscar-winning film The Queen.
And the depiction of the remote treetop viewing platform and lodge in Kenya’s Aberdare national park is certainly true.
As Lady Pamela put it to PEOPLE a few years ago of the moment that history, unbeknownst to Elizabeth, changed for her, “She went up that ladder a princess and came down a queen.”
Lady Pamela recalled the romantic, exciting break in Kenya, after a week of official engagements. “They had been fishing and riding but the climax of it was a night up the tree to look at the game. She had her cine camera with her and for her it was the absolute highlight. And had been tremendously excited by all the game we had seen. She kept talking about how she was going to write to her parents and describe it all.”
There followed the difficult flight home. “When we landed in England and seeing Winston Churchill and others drawn up on the tarmac, there was this sudden realization that this was the end of her private life,” Lady Pamela added.