Is it any wonder, asks Justine Picardie, given the horrors shes had to overcome?
‘Isn’t the weather awful?’ she continues, then sits down in a businesslike manner, regarding me with a steady gaze out of her grey-blue eyes (the colour of an English sky). She is wearing fashion’s international uniform of black – narrowly cut trousers, shirt and high heels – as befits her status as a successful model (for Ralph Lauren and others); yet it’s easy to imagine her dressed as a head girl, or a hospital matron or in high-ranking military garb from the Second World War. This is partly because of the clipped confidence of her voice (after all, as the granddaughter of Lord Mountbatten, she’s a direct descendant of Queen Victoria, and Prince Charles is her godfather); and also because of the classic regularity of her features. As she approaches her 40th birthday, she is strikingly handsome, rather than simply pretty, and she will doubtless have the same chiselled appearance in decades to come. She looks, in fact, like her mother’s daughter (who is, let us not forget, a former la
