Doom-scrolling through YouTube as I sat waiting for the Mare of Easttown finale on Monday, I chanced upon a clip called “Diamond Jubilee River Pageant: The Best Bits.”
As it was only three minutes, I decided to commit, although the scenes of that sodden flotilla on one of the wettest and coldest June days on record linger indelibly in the memory of anyone who watched it.
The “Shiver on the River” was in 2012 but feels like yesterday: those images of the shawled Queen in white; a chirpy Charles and Camilla bobbing to the hornpipe; Kate Middleton, elegant in red McQueen; the little ships of Dunkirk; the loyal crowds hanging off the bridges—all seemed fresh as anything as I picked out my own “best bits” from the brief, edited highlights, to wit:
The Duke of Edinburgh—disdaining an umbrella as he stood ramrod straight in his medals on the deck of a pimped-out, red-and-gold, velvet-swagged royal barge—was alive. (And the fact that he continued to live for many years after long hours in the rain was a mercy as he could have so easily caught his death.)
And Prince Harry was so charming … and single!
It feels like yesterday—but it was nine ago. And the next one is almost upon us. For those tasked with the grave national duty of organizing—and casting—Her Majesty’s Platinum Jubilee, June 2022 must feel like tomorrow.
Teams across Downing Street, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (D.C.M.S.), and members of the royal household in Buckingham Palace have been Zooming for months in preparation for the four-day Jubilee bank holiday, June 2 through 5. They have but one year to come up with something fitting for Her Majesty, the only monarch in British history to have served 70 years on the throne, and to decide which members of the royal family get to sit where in the horse-drawn carriage in the inevitable parade.
“You are permitted to speculate who will and will not be pride of place,” my Palace mole says. O.K., then: my guess is the Sussexes will not be in the front of house for this one. But they will nevertheless leave their Markle.
My sources tell me that alongside the “spectacular moments” promised on the government Web site, this pageant will be a rainbow event of unimpeachable wokeness. While the Trooping of the Colour will star soldiers, airmen, and men in fancy dress who look like walking face cards from a Ruritanian deck, brace yourselves for “spoken word” in the pageant, which threatens to be a lot more “street.”
“Oh, yes,” my Palace mole tells me, “there will be the most tremendous amount of diversity as well as troops galore.”
Prince Charles and his wife, though, will be front and center. Charles last month called on “everyone” to plant a tree for his mother’s Jubilee. “As we approach this most special year, I invite you all to join me to plant a tree for the jubilee – in other words – a treebilee!”
“You are permitted to speculate who will and will not be pride of place,” my Palace mole says. O.K., then: my guess is the Sussexes will not be in the front of house for this one.
Everyone can make the “treebilee” happen (I am repeating this as Prince Charles was obviously so proud of his coinage), but when it comes to royal events such as funerals, anniversaries, weddings, jubilees, and coronations, you need the crack troops to do the heavy lifting.
For these landmarks, there is a need to both frame the narrative and project the institution to the watching world, so let us agree: 12 months is little time to put on a show that rams it home that Britain is Great and the Kingdom is United under the Crown.
This Jubilee is being masterminded by two all-round Establishment good eggs: co-chairmen Sir Michael Lockett (he was in charge of the “Shiver on the River” pageant and knighted for his pains) and Nicholas Coleridge, the chairman of the V&A (ergo, bound to be “Sir Nick” soon). The river element has been quietly dropped for the Platinum iteration of the Jubilee, which seems wise.
Get on with it, I hear you cry, like Prince Philip in his pomp. What’s on the cards for 2022? Well, from this range it appears that on the Thursday there will be quite the Trooping of the Colour, with servicemen and women in their uniforms from all points of the compass and Commonwealth. Following this, in the evening, the British tradition of setting things on fire will be continued and beacons will be lit all across the Queen’s realm. This will be followed by a Service of Thanksgiving at St. Paul’s Cathedral on the Friday, and on Saturday there will be a live “Platinum Party at the Palace” concert hosted by the BBC—still our state broadcaster despite the shenanigans over the Princess Di interview—which has been promised to include some of entertainment’s biggest names (Elton John? Paul McCartney? Stormzy?). There will be the Big Jubilee Lunch on Sunday––think bunting, oodles of bunting, pearly queens, and town criers––and the celebration will climax when there will be … another “pageant.” This one on dry land, thank heavens.
Taking part in the pageant alone are expected to be more than 5,000 people of all colors and creeds, and the revel will be watched by an estimated million bystanders, and perhaps billions more on television.
“Oh, yes,” my Palace mole tells me, “there will be the most tremendous amount of diversity as well as troops galore.”
It may not sound like your idea of a party––my name for it is already the “twee-bilee”––but trust me on this: it will unite the nation rather more than the other planned national celebration for next year. Festival UK* 2022 is being organized as a showcase of design and can-do bulldog spirit, “backed by £120m [$170 million] of new investment”—an event which I am banned from calling “the Festival of Brexit.” (I have no idea why there’s an asterisk after U.K., either.)
Given that this London season is another washout (Wimbledon is going ahead but will be “socially distanced”) and we are facing further public-health horrors, thanks to the Indian variant, the Jubilee is really all we have to look forward to right now.
And I say that in full knowledge that Her Majesty the Queen is 95 years old. Save Ye Date, subjects!
Rachel Johnson is a journalist and author. Her books include The Mummy Diaries, Notting Hell, and Rake’s Progress: My Political Midlife Crisis