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My mother grew up in an army family. Her father, a British officer, had fought in World War II and after that in Malaya, and had taught her to shoot as a young girl. She was an excellent shot. When she was a teenager her father was posted to Jordan, and she met my father at a diplomatic reception. She was just nineteen at the time, and he was twenty-five. He was entranced by her beauty and charm and would invite her to the palace from time to time to watch a movie with his mother and family. My mother reciprocated by inviting him to her parents’ house, where he was served cakes and strong English tea. They discovered a shared interest in motor sports, and got to know each other better on trips to the Amman Go-Kart Club, where my father taught her to drive. Soon she was competing in the ladies’ races. About a year after they first met, my father proposed and, too overcome to speak, she simply nodded her assent. Born Antoinette Gardiner, my mother converted to Islam before the wedding, became a Jordanian citizen, and took the name Muna Al Hussein.

Two days before the wedding they were discussing my mother’s future role in the royal family when she said, “Does it sound ridiculous if I say that I don’t really want the title of queen?” Delighted that she was marrying for love rather than a title, my father gladly assented, and they were wed on May 25, 1961, in a simple ceremony at Zahran Palace in Amman. After the wedding my mother became Princess Muna, and the next year, I arrived.

Amman in 1968 was not the safest of cities. Yasser Arafat and his guerrilla fighters were launching attacks from Jordanian territory into Israel, and the Israeli army retaliated periodically, striking targets inside Jordan. Apart from Israeli bombs, there were various Egyptians and Syrians with nefarious designs: Soviet-sponsored communist agitators and hired assassins determined to destabilize moderate governments like ours. Amman became a gathering place for all types of radicals, from the German Baader-Meinhof Gang and the Japanese Red Army to the Venezuelan terrorist Carlos the Jackal, many of them attracted by Jordan’s proximity to the Israeli-occupied West Bank and the possibility of striking at Israel. With the Jordanian army patrolling the borders, the guerrillas and radicals took over parts of the city. They established roadblocks and brought whole neighborhoods under their control. I remember when we drove down from our house into Amman at night in my mother’s old white Mercedes, we had to cover the headlights lest roving guerrillas open fire. My mother never left the house without a Kalashnikov in the passenger seat and a small Colt revolver in the glove box.

The situation in Jordan was especially dispiriting because the country had welcomed Yasser Arafat and his men with open arms after the 1967 war and had allowed the PLO to enjoy freedom of movement. But Arafat failed to repay this generosity. His forces started to undermine the state. They levied taxes and ignored the laws. Many guerrilla groups under the PLO acted with impunity. If they were hungry, guerrilla fighters would break into a house while the owner was at work and force his wife to cook lunch for them at gunpoint. They would kidnap people for ransom, kill people at random, confiscate cars, occupy homes, and attack hotels, hoping to take foreign nationals hostage.

I was six years old at the time and my parents decided to send me out of the country to escape the mounting violence and chaos inside Jordan. Since my father had gone to Harrow, England was a natural choice. I still remember arriving in the evening at St. Edmund’s School, a large country house in Surrey set in extensive grounds. Driving from Heathrow Airport through the green fields and tightly packed hedgerows, I felt a long way from the dusty desert roads of Jordan.

Although the teachers were friendly and welcoming, I was not happy at St. Edmund’s. Part of my dislike was due to leaving my parents at such a young age and part of it