Angling For a Parade
Times2 - Can we have more pomp in royal circumstances? By Michael Gove
Perhaps I’m ageing prematurely, my features already set in the po-faced mask of a humourless crusty before I’m 40, but these efforts to make royal celebrations more accessible strike me as uncomfortably close to naff, and in some cases dangerously near to twee. The apogee, or perhaps that should be nadir, of attempts to mix monarchy with popular culture came with the well-intentioned but tragically contrived It’s A Royal Knockout of 1987. One would have thought that that experience might have inoculated the Palace against tweeness and naffness in all its varieties. But while nothing on that scale has ever, wisely, been attempted, the belief that the monarchy needs to be associated with popular culture to maintain its relevance and appeal persists.
What we need is a little Tudor-style pomp. After all, everybody loves a parade.
April 26th, 2006 at 2:58 pm
Tudor-style? Did they have it all diagramed by then? Seems a tad early. I’m not certain that court processions even changed into Parade Dress, so they may have been ummm, road-worn. I’d wait until the invention of drycleaning at least. I’d also think gentlemen of the black-rod and numerous chamberlains would be needed. And someting to fly overhead - maybe a huge British 64 gun Zep-of-the-line.
April 27th, 2006 at 5:04 am
I’d like to see HMQ rowed up, or for that matter down, the Thames on a huge Tudor-style Royal Barge, and accompanied by the barges of all the livery companies in full rig. Handel’s Water Music playing in the distance. Millions of people would line the banks and cheer her.
April 27th, 2006 at 5:13 am
Our Zeps weren’t very good, Half, my uncle as a little boy was watching one of them over the Humber when he observed that, in his words “it’s broken!” He was being hushed by other spectators when the Zep in question crashed not very gracefully into the Humber, killing almost all the crew. The funny thing was that the Zep in question had been built for the US Navy: http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/ac-forn/uk/uk-lta/r38.htm
The Germans were much better at Zeps.
April 27th, 2006 at 9:18 am
See, a Royal Barge. That’s EXACTLY the sort of thing I mean! Oh, how lovely it would be!
April 27th, 2006 at 3:40 pm
I’ve never seen a Zep of course, but one of my major yoofull memories is of seeing the Goodyear Blimp (Akron?) cross overhead at maybe 200 ft. I was just dinking around in the back yard. I had no warning, audible or visual that it was on the way…. It was JUST THERE. I was born to fly fighter blimps.
April 27th, 2006 at 4:24 pm
Ehm, what exactly was the point of them? Because, to the layman, they seem colossally stupid.
April 28th, 2006 at 11:15 am
It has the same sort of cool that a ballon has plus and little bit of steam locomotive gigantism weird thrown in. No good reason, just fun.