TRUE BLUE BLOOD WHO ROYALS TRUSTED
LADY Susan Hussey has been a great favourite within the royal household for more than 60 years and became one of Queen Elizabeth II’s dearest friends and confidantes. Her bond to the late monarch was apparent when the Queen asked her to accompany her to the funeral of Prince Philip.
Godmother to William, Prince of Wales, her role as “number-one-head-girl” among the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting was formally known as “Woman of the Bedchamber”.
Lady Susan, now 83, was equally valued by King Charles who ensured she was one of three ladies-in-waiting to be given new positions in his court known as “ladies of the household”.
From an impeccably aristocratic background, Lady Susan joined Buckingham Palace to help answer letters in 1960, the year of Prince Andrew’s birth.
The youngest daughter of the 12th Earl and Countess of Waldegrave soon made herself invaluable to the Queen. She married Marmaduke Hussey the year before he became Chairman of the Board of Governors of the BBC.The couple feature in the latest series of The Crown played by Haydn Gwynne and Richard Cordery. She became Baroness Hussey in 1996 while her younger brother William Waldegrave served as a Tory cabinet minister in the 1990s.
A mother of two, her family’s royal service dates back to the early 1700s and continues with her daughter Lady Katherine Brooke who is a companion to the Queen Consort.
Lady Susan is said to have remarked ahead of Prince Harry and Meghan’s wedding in 2018 that their relationship “would end in tears”.
The claim was made in Tom Bower’s book Revenge: Meghan, Harry and the War between the Windsors.
Lady Susan, who is unpaid apart from the remuneration of expenses, was said to have made the comment at a lunch with theatre executives.
Bower wrote: “While discussing the possibility that Meghan might become linked with the National Theatre after the wedding, Hussey became serious about the couple’s future. “That will all end in tears,” she is alleged to have warned. “Mark my words.”
Yesterday the journalist most closely associated with the Sussexes, Omid Scobie, condemned Lady Susan’s racist outburst. He tweeted: “Yesterday’s event should have been a moment to uplift and support.
“The fact that Fulani – a prominent figure providing the only safe space in Britain for black survivors of domestic violence – was made to feel this way by a senior Palace aide is unforgivable.”