Cressida Bonas has touched on her late sister’s ‘infectious’ humour – and how she hopes her children might adopt a similar personality trait.
Prince Harry’s ex-girlfriend, 37, who is the daughter of Jeffery Bonas and Lady Mary-Gaye Curzon, tragically lost her sister, Pandora Cooper-Key, aged 51, in July 2024 after a battle with cancer.
Pandora, a ceramicist and former accessories designer for Vivienne Westwood, suffered from Li-Fraumeni syndrome – a rare genetic condition that prevents the body from fighting off cancer. She was first diagnosed just five weeks after giving birth to her eldest son, Bow, now 18.
‘Despite being unwell for years, she found joy in the smallest things and was always grateful,’ Cressida told The Times.
‘Pandora believed in going after what you want rather than waiting for it to fall into your lap. She used to say, “What’s the worst that can happen?” Her sense of humour was infectious, and she could talk to anyone.
‘Even now I sometimes hear her in my ear pushing me on, reminding me to just get out there and live life fully. I’d like to pass that on to my children.’
Cressida married property investor Harry Wentworth-Stanley in 2020, and they have two children – son Wilbur, three, and daughter Delphina, 11 months.
The sisters’ bond was so treasured that, when her daughter was born in June last year, Cressida gave her the middle name ‘Pandora’ in tribute.
Cressida Bonas has opened up about her late sister, Pandora Cooper-Key, two years after her death (pictured together in 2016)
In 2024, at Pandora’s memorial service, Cressida declared: ‘My heart is forever tied to yours.’
She was joined at the service, at St Luke’s church in Chelsea, west London, by Pandora’s friends including Queen Camilla’s son, Tom Parker Bowles, and her nephew Sir Ben Elliot.
Cressida read a moving ‘letter to Pandora’ that she composed after her death. The women’s mother, Lady Mary-Gaye Curzon, paid tribute, saying: ‘Nobody on earth who ever met Pandora could help falling in love with her.’
Pandora’s father, Esmond Cooper-Key, died in 1985 aged 42.
One of Pandora’s friends, Serena Cook, amused the congregation with tales from their travels through Latin America: ‘We stole watermelons from a field in Nicaragua, scrambling up a tree in absolute hysterics. We got chased by a furious farmer.’
It comes after Cressida opened up about her experience of motherhood in conversation with The Telegraph.
Cressida admitted that being a mother ‘is unpredictable and frightening’ and said she has ‘elements of her childhood she would like to leave in the past’.
Speaking at the time, she said: ‘My husband and I struggled to conceive, and our son is a product of IVF. Fortunately, after the successful transfer of another of our embryos, I am pregnant with our second child.
Cressida shares her son Wilbur, now three, with property investor husband Harry Wentworth-Stanley (pictured together)
‘Even though I remind myself how fortunate we are to have been able to have children, being a mum is the most challenging thing I’ve ever done. It is unpredictable, frightening and it tests me every day,’ she wrote.
The socialite, who dated Prince Harry from 2012 to 2014 and still remains close to the Royal Family, revealed that she was pregnant with her second child in January last year.
‘I am now well into my second pregnancy,’ she wrote in The Spectator magazine. ‘Having conceived through IVF the first time, we were fortunate to have another embryo stored away in a freezer.’
Cressida added that it was a difficult pregnancy. ‘I’ve been battling morning sickness,’ she said. ‘I’ve never had it before, and now feel like I’ve been swaying on a boat for months.’
She gave birth in June that year – and gave her daughter the middle name Pandora in honour of her sister.
‘They have named their daughter Delphina Pandora Wentworth-Stanley,’ a friend told the Daily Mail’s Diary Editor Richard Eden at the time. ‘It’s a beautiful name for a beautiful girl.’
