Royal Ascot: Royal Procession | Day 3

Royal Ascot | Prince & Princess Of Wales joins the King on Day Two of the Royal Procession

Jeeves will be away ... for a period of 8 days.

A Farley Country Attire

 

The Story of A.Farley Country Attire

Established in 1968 when Major William Farley opened the original Farley Menswear store in Tavistock, Devon, A Farley Country Attire draws on a proud Farley family heritage in clothing retail.

Today we are an independent family business specialising in premium country clothing and footwear from leading brands including Barbour, Le Chameau, Ariat, Dubarry, Härkila, RM Williams and more. Based in Leicestershire, the heart of rural England, we pride ourselves on exemplary levels of customer service coupled with an in-depth knowledge of country clothing.

A.Farley Country Attire Timeline

2026: We expanded into the world of premium golf with the launch of our dedicated Vessel Golf showroom in Kibworth. Alongside one of the UK’s largest selections of Vessel golf bags, we also introduced a curated range of premium golf apparel and equipment from brands including J.Lindeberg, Peter Millar, G/FORE, FootJoy and Titleist.

2024: We introduced YETI to our range, bringing the iconic brand’s premium coolers, drinkware and outdoor gear to A Farley Country Attire both in-store and online.

2023: A Farley Country Attire continued its growth as one of the UK’s leading independent retailers of premium country clothing and footwear, with ongoing investment in our e-commerce operations and customer service team at our Kibworth headquarters.

2021: Our e-commerce team moved into a new larger office and warehouse in Kibworth to accommodate the growing customer service team and we recently celebrated together at our annual Christmas party. We think everyone scrubbed up really well....!

2018: In September we opened our fabulous new country clothing store in Kibworth, Leicestershire. Fully stocked with your favourite country brands we are perfectly located on the A6 with our own, large, free car park, call in and see for yourself…

2014: The business evolved towards a stronger focus on premium country clothing and footwear, with the addition of leading brands including Barbour, Le Chameau, Ariat and Dubarry, laying the foundations for what would become A Farley Country Attire.

2012: Adam Farley and Michael Walter launched the online store www.afarley.co.uk, marking the beginning of A Farley Country Attire’s growing e-commerce business from its headquarters in Kibworth, Leicestershire.

2003: Major William Farley’s grandson Adam followed in his footsteps, opening his own menswear store in Leicestershire, stocking leading brands such as Meyer, RM Williams, Magee, and Barker Shoes.

1968: Our story began when Major William Farley opened the original store Farley Menswear in Devon…

  

Today

Today, A Farley Country Attire is proud to be one of the UK’s leading independent retailers of premium country clothing and footwear.

From our headquarters in Kibworth, Leicestershire, we serve customers both in-store and online at afarley.co.uk, offering carefully selected brands including Ariat, RM Williams, Le Chameau, Dubarry, Härkila and Barbour.

In recent years we have also expanded into premium outdoor and golf categories, introducing YETI products and launching our dedicated Vessel Golf showroom, featuring brands such as J.Lindeberg, Peter Millar, G/FORE, FootJoy and Titleist.

More than 55 years after Major William Farley opened the original store in Tavistock, Devon, the business remains proudly independent and family run.

Farlows of Pall Mall

 

Farlows of Pall Mall is an iconic London outdoor pursuits retail flagship store specializing in high-end fly fishing gear, shooting equipment, and luxury British country clothing. Founded in 1840 by brothers Charles and John King Farlow, it remains one of the world's oldest and most prestigious names in field sports.

Store Overview

The flagship storefront spans over 6,500 square feet across two floors of a grand, majestic listed building. Located in the heart of St. James's, it is recognized globally for providing elite gear paired with expert, encyclopedic advice from passionate field staff.

Department Offerings

• Fly Fishing: Premium fly rods, reels, lines, and custom fly-tying materials. They stock their own custom tackle alongside global heritage brands like Hardy.
• Shooting & Fieldwear: Technical British shooting tweeds spun exclusively in Hawick, Scotland. They carry premium outdoor protection built for classic estate sports.
• Country Clothing: Tailored seasonal attire for both men and women. They host a specialized boot room featuring high-end brands like Dubarry, Tricker's, and Meindl.

Location & Visitor Details

• Address: 9 Pall Mall, London SW1Y 5NP, United Kingdom
• Transit: Situated centrally in St. James's, approximately a two-minute walk from Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly.
• Opening Hours: Monday to Friday from 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM, and Saturdays from 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM (Closed Sundays)

 

The Ritz: A Century of Wealth, Privilege, and Perfection | Up Close

 

César Ritz's 1898 sacking from The Savoy for embezzlement and fraud spurred him to launch his own luxury hotel brand, immediately transforming his reputation into the "King of Hoteliers." Backed by his elite clientele, he opened the Ritz Paris in 1898 and the Carlton Hotel in London, setting new standards for luxury, personal service, and modern amenities like en-suite bathrooms.

 

The Sacking and Its Aftermath

• The Scandal: In March 1898, Richard D'Oyly Carte dismissed César Ritz (manager), Auguste Escoffier (chef), and their associates from the Savoy for stealing over £3,400 in wine, spirits, and accepting supplier kickbacks, totaling roughly £19,137, or over £2 million in modern value.
• The Reaction: Rather than retiring in disgrace, Ritz, supported by patrons such as Lady de Grey who stated "Where Ritz goes, I go," seized the opportunity to create his own brand, fulfilling a long-held ambition to serve his clientele directly.

Creation of the Ritz Hotels

• Ritz Paris (1898): Ritz purchased a building on Place Vendôme in Paris, opening the Hôtel Ritz Paris in June 1898. It was designed to provide ultimate, intimate luxury with ensuite bathrooms, exceptional lighting, and immense focus on hygiene and comfort.
• Carlton Hotel & The Ritz London (1899/1906): Following the Paris success, Ritz opened the Carlton Hotel in London in 1899 to directly compete with the Savoy. In 1906, he opened the legendary Ritz London, fully cementing the "ritzy" brand of luxury.
• Partnering with Escoffier: The pair leveraged their elite reputation to attract their former Savoy clientele to their new establishments, solidifying the formula for modern hotel luxury.

 

Pamela Hicks, Lady-in-Waiting to Elizabeth II of Britain, Dies at 97

 

Pamela Hicks, Lady-in-Waiting to Elizabeth II of Britain, Dies at 97

 

The queen’s third cousin, she was a bridesmaid at the royal wedding in 1947, and witnessed firsthand pivotal moments in British history.

 

By Alan Cowell

June 5, 2026, 5:57 p.m. ET

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/05/world/europe/pamela-hicks-dead.html

 

Pamela Hicks, a cousin, bridesmaid and lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth II of Britain who witnessed the birth of an independent India as the daughter of the last imperial viceroy and who was one of the very few aides on hand in a remote corner of Africa when Elizabeth learned that her father’s death had lofted her to the throne, died on Friday. She was 97.

 

Her daughter India Hicks announced the death on social media, but did not say where she died.

 

From the moment of her birth in a suite at the Ritz Hotel in Barcelona — with King Alfonso XIII of Spain personally supervising the appointment of a physician — to her attendance at Elizabeth’s funeral in 2022, Ms. Hicks led a life that was intertwined with Europe’s royal houses.

 

She was a great-great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria and a first cousin to Prince Philip, Elizabeth’s husband. Her father, Lord Louis Mountbatten, was descended from the Battenberg dynasty of Germany and was often said to be a mentor to King Charles III when he was the heir to the throne. She and her elder sister, Patricia, were third cousins to Elizabeth and were bridesmaids at the royal wedding in 1947.

 

Ms. Hicks’s life was punctuated by tragedy — her father was among those killed in a 1979 bomb attack on the family fishing boat, orchestrated by members of the Irish Republican Army — and by what modern critics might depict as scandal. Her mother, Edwina Ashley, an heiress of great wealth and beauty, was known for taking lovers, one of whom moved in with the family, apparently with her husband’s consent.

 

When the Mountbattens moved to New Delhi in 1947, as Britain prepared to relinquish the so-called “jewel in the crown” of its empire, her mother was said to have forged a deep and mutual attachment with Jawaharlal Nehru, an Indian nationalist leader who became the country’s first prime minister. (Ms. Hicks always denied biographers’ suggestions that the relationship had been sexual.)

 

For his part, Lord Mountbatten had a longstanding and intimate relationship with Yola Letellier, a Frenchwoman on whom the writer Colette had based the title character of her 1944 novella “Gigi.”

 

Ms. Hicks’s own marriage to a commoner in 1960 took her into a different world of the international jet-set as the wife of David Hicks, a well-known designer of chic interiors in the 1960s. When her husband’s business began to falter in the late 1970s, the couple sold Britwell House, their home in Oxfordshire, and moved into the Grove, a smaller but still grand home on the same estate.

 

The wedding was “an unorthodox match, but one that would change my life completely,” Ms. Hicks wrote in a 2012 memoir, “Daughter of Empire: Life as a Mountbatten.”

 

“After 29 years as the dutiful daughter of a family at the heart of British society, with all its traditions and ceremonies,” she added, “I was about to enter a completely new world — of fashion, design and the whirlwind of the 1960s.”

 

Mr. Hicks died in 1998. In addition to their daughter India, Ms. Hicks’s survivors include another daughter, Edwina Hicks; a son, Ashley Hicks; and 12 grandchildren.

 

Pamela Carmen Louise Mountbatten was born in Barcelona on April 19, 1929, while her parents were traveling in Spain. As his wife went into labor, Lord Mountbatten called a cousin, Queen Victoria Eugenie of Spain, to seek help finding a doctor. King Alfonso ended up making the arrangements for a qualified physician to attend the birth. He also ordered the Royal Guard to surround the Ritz, Ms. Hicks wrote in her memoir.

 

She was five years younger than Patricia, her only sibling, with whom she spent much of a peripatetic childhood while their parents traveled widely. Their mother undertook lengthy and exotic journeys with a favored lover, Lt. Col. Harold Phillips, a 6-foot-5 officer in the Coldstream Guards known as Bunny, who moved in with the family.

 

“It was a very unconventional marriage, but brought about by love, really,” Ms. Hicks told Vanity Fair in 2013. “My father adored my mother and wanted her to be happy. So it was his idea to bring Bunny, whom we adored, into the family. And he had Yola. So it was an extended family intimacy, but it worked very well indeed.”

 

The sisters were brought up largely by nannies and governesses, at one point spending months away from their parents at a hotel in rural Hungary after her mother lost the establishment’s address. On other occasions, her mother sent back unusual pets, including a lion cub and a bear, which inevitably grew to be threateningly large.

 

At home, their parents’ guests included Queen Mary, Noël Coward, Winston Churchill and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. At one point, King Edward VIII spent time at the Mountbatten home in England with Wallis Simpson, the American for whom he gave up the throne in 1936.

 

In later life, Ms. Hicks was scathing about Mrs. Simpson. In the interview with Vanity Fair, she called her “hardhearted” and accused her of devoting herself to a wealthy American playboy, to the chagrin of the former king. In the same interview, Ms. Hicks had sharp words, too, for Princess Diana, calling her “really spiteful, really unkind” to Charles before her death in 1997.

 

During World War II, the sisters were evacuated briefly to New York because of fears that, if Germany invaded, the Mountbatten family could be at risk — because of its aristocratic pedigree and because the two girls and their mother traced Jewish ancestry to their great-grandfather, Ernest Cassel, a wealthy financier.

 

In New York, they were housed on Fifth Avenue, near St. Patrick’s Cathedral, in the vast apartment of the socialite Grace Vanderbilt.

 

For the teenage Pamela, the family’s postwar deployment to India to oversee independence and the subsequent partition appears to have offered a remarkable and exhilarating time. She befriended Nehru and Gandhi, and was charged by her parents with placating Indian student leaders who had been jailed by the same British authorities that were now preparing to withdraw.

 

From the abdication of Edward VIII, Ms. Hicks had known that her cousin Elizabeth was in the direct line of succession. Yet, she later wrote, it came as a surprise when King George VI died in 1952, at 56, while Elizabeth and Philip were on tour in Kenya.

 

As lady-in-waiting, Ms. Hicks was one of only a handful of close aides who traveled with the couple to Treetops, a remote game-viewing lodge built on a platform high up in an ancient fig tree overlooking a watering hole.

 

In the era before cellphones and satellite communications, the small group was completely out of touch. Not only that, urgent encrypted messages about the king’s death, sent to the British colonial authorities in Kenya, could not be deciphered because the official in charge of the code book was traveling to meet the royal couple later in the tour.

 

Only when the party moved on to the next scheduled stop on their journey after Treetops did royal aides confirm from a crackly BBC radio broadcast that the king had died. In British monarchic tradition, an heir assumes the throne the very second the previous queen or king dies.

 

After Philip broke the news to Elizabeth, Ms. Hicks wrote, “I instinctively gave her a hug but quickly, remembering that she was now queen, dropped into a deep curtsy.”

 

Alan Cowell had a long career as a foreign correspondent for The Times based in Africa, the Middle East and Europe.