Sunday 16th July 2023

The talks were one thing: Castles and Swimming Pools: thrilling although the Director might have presented his section in swimming costume for effect, especially since he is a champion swimmer. Sanctuary was the theme. And fantasy. Why not live in a dream world? The Castles person finished her talk then began again after the Director had started his.

The Literary Festival lasted for two days.

Alan Titchmarsh: Weather is one thing. Climate another.

Robin Lane-Fox: ‘Bugger plans’. ‘Re-wilding: forget the re.’ ‘In my garden I kill things.’ ‘Don’t make your garden just to be photographed.’ ‘The garden is a sanctuary, especially in trouble as when Martha was so injured in that car crash.’

Tom Stuart-Smith: What’s the story in the garden? one time it was Wagner but nobody knew. Another time there wasn’t one and an elderly peer, visiting, came up to the designer and said, ‘Why?’ The garden must belong somehow in its place. At the Rausings, the solution was to remove the garden altogether.

There was an undertow. Robert Sackville-West spoke of Vita and Knole. The romance. The past. The great house, where he now lives following the settlement a previous Lord Sackville made with the National Trust. By chance a number of heirs turned up for that talk. Afterwards they had confab: ‘Is Mullings really your life?’ one of them asked another. ‘Yes, really,’ was the somewhat sunken reply. He’d tried Malaya but it was no good.

In a remote corner of the car park, as the second day drew to a close, a black limo was parked. Four attendants were helping a man into evening dress. Glyndebourniana being nearby, one can only wonder. This was possibly one of our leading businessmen. He might be safe. Who knows?

But for others… how much longer, the sanctuary of the garden, the acres borne down through centuries? A terrible undertow, the black swirling waters of Socialism, threatens to engulf…

In the café one of the luncheon times, our Lady hostess and her friend were in the queue. ‘Why are we here?’ her friend asked. ‘I thought we were going to look at the poppies.’ Neither of them seemed to know. When they got to the front of the queue, the attendant repelled an intruding woman. ‘I’ll be with you when I’ve finished serving these ladies.’ When it was my turn, I said, ‘It’s funny you said “ladies” because one of them actually is a lady.’ Royston King said, ‘We have a very different sense of humour.’

I thought it was incredibly exciting.

Parham: Where it Happened. Who Knew W. Sussex could be so Impressively Bare and Medieval and Fortified

Parham Without: Graphs Not Allowed Within which was Purring with Money and Care. But Royston Attended the Talks about it: Struggle for Survival and Fears for the Future Despite Guinness money…

Friday 7th July 2023

We dined on the private side two nights in a row. This year the Garden Museum Literary Festival was held at Parham in Sussex. Royston King and I were put up in an hotel and received at dinner both the nights of the festival by a nearby Lord and Lady in one of England’s most blazing Statelies. But on the private side. The public not admitted.

‘There’s our very plain house,’ the  Lady said as returning from a moonlit tour of her private garden (self-designed), the vast facade loomed before us. Incredible that ordinary conversation could take place in such a setting but it did. Despite the pricelessness of the Old Masters in the Library and several enormous drawing rooms beyond, not used on this occasion or even mentioned. The linking corridor is 40′ high and the gilt frames were unceasing to the ceiling. ‘Look there’s a Hudson,’ I said to the Lord. ‘We’ve got one of them.’ ‘Granny kept it in the attic for fear Mrs Dinner would put a wet cloth over it,’ I explained. I don’t think Hudson was Reynolds’s teacher as I said.

Lord and Lady were incredibly nice. On the mantle was a personal card from the King and Queen. But I’m afraid my instinct in the presence of titles and masonry and gilt frames is to sink permanently to the floor in the deepest curtsey. Lady did ask me how I’d slept in the hotel and I dared to enquire after her own night but she seemed not to understand. The second night they showed us the Painted Staircase and Lady said the Duchess of Lincolnshire who built the house had had herself depicted in a tremendous classical scene on it. I said, ‘She was a long way from home,’ meaning Lincolnshire is nowhere near West Sussex. Once again she seemed not to understand. Royston said later it was a stupid thing to say. On the second night Lady had a rather different air than on the first. Then I noticed a living blaze of diamonds at her wrist. So that was what was powering her.

Neighbours were at dinner but not the titled ones. Rather, as in Jane Austen, those that had suffered misfortune. Otherwise household names in the landscape/garden design world, gays from that world, trustees, patrons, literary figures, some staying in the house, others living nearby. All the women had been at Cranborne Chase School, apparently, known to me from Barrowborough days. That was a link, as was the woman (Cranborne Chase) sitting next to me whose son was friends with the daughter of one of Robert Nevil’s friends and the person sitting beyond her had got the estranged father of that child staying with him as we spoke. None of them thought this coincidence at all remarkable. They were so blasé. Which just shows how things are when you’re at the top.

Or near the top. Because one’s not aristocracy, of course. Only Landed Gentry. So awful.

Not all the guests assembled in the library before dinner. Some just appeared from nowhere – upstairs presumably. Then disappeared afterwards. On the second night, Lady said, in the Library, ‘Where are the others? Not in there still?’  Staff were not to be hindered from laying breakfast. Dinner was taken off silver and the chargers on which it was offered by staff were also silver. 14 dined the first night and 23 the second. It was a miracle how the table got bigger and the cloth covering it must have been 50 foot long. There were ornate candelabra and table ornaments but it would have been common to take too much interest in them.

Royston said he wished the dinner could have gone on forever. He sat next to a Marchioness who complained that he never took her seriously and kept calling her a Marchioness all the time,

Wednesday 21st June 2023

They put up a barrier near the entrance so ordinary members of the public gathered behind it with what must have been the vaguest of red carpet expectations. Royston King was in A&E with minutes to spare. He’d slashed his finger with secateurs, perhaps identifying as a garden shrub.

But we got in with brilliance. It could have been a night-club – throbbing mu, the odd person as an installation, notably one whose head had been replaced by a ballon. But mostly the Great and the Good in the older spectrum. ‘You’ve already introduced me to the Head of the Historic Royal Palaces,’ I said to Royston, ‘and it was someone else.’ ‘No, that was the former Head.’ Or, ‘That was the Chair, not the Chief Executive.’

On a bench at the side was a ghost – Bianca Jagger. Some had come off the walls, such as Russell Tovey. The Mayor, ghastly of course, but in real life sparkling and beautifully turned out, it can’t be denied. Oh dear. Firm handshake followed by departure through a back exit. Two security guards. A Tax Advisor had fallen into despair. She showed us Lord Byron’s screen which he had cut out and glued himself with many pugilists. ‘What shall I do now?’ she wailed. The screen was somehow all her doing. But now there was no hope.

Joshua Baring was with a suite which, rolling on, gathered up Lawrence Dallaglio who stuck. They were thrilled with each other and it could have made a painting by Titian: ‘Mars Tamed by a Fawn with Art Talk’. Lawrence Dallaglio is much better looking now than in his Rugby heyday.

The refurb of the National Portrait Gallery though – the guests were as nothing, they paled beside the raging triumph. Tristram Hunt declared it a triumph. We started with the Tudors. As Royston said, the illusion is that nothing has changed; the same chronology, the history of Our Nation as always. But a slight jolt and the whole thing comes blazing to life. At the heart, as it were, is a room with two huge paintings – one an Abolitionist Meeting and the other the old House of Commons, voting through one of the Reform Acts, so the core of the life of our Nation, gathering democracy without revolution, free speech, the right to protest and the effectiveness thereof, under the Constitutional Monarchy, of course, the foundation of Our Freedom.

Beautifully judged. No Woke hectoring. An increased representation, new acquisitions showing those of different races and skin colour but accurate and measured.

We went down to the 20th century floor. Rounding a corner, there was Lilibet in the entrance, looking lonely by Annigoni. We hadn’t expected to see her. What a jolt. What magnificence. Without a thought, I curtseyed. The arrangement hurtles forward with ever greater brilliance. Essentially they are all mixed up, so thrilling juxtapostions, provoking thought – Dickens, Octavia Hill and Darwin together for instance. Later the King (another curtsey) with Marcus Rashford. On another wall, you get Beatrix Potter, James Joyce and Dame Anna Neagle.

Nothing could more powerfully convey the Monarchy in the fabric of national life and that life zinging with eccentrics, tormented souls, screaming queens, odd fey types (like Constable) and, darling, just so much talent and energy.

What a great nation, now and forever.

For the first time, one is aware of portraiture as an art. The crazy mixed up hanging means that suddenly there is a really famous picture leaping out, one that would stand on its own merit whoever it was of. Sometimes the idea seems to have been to put portraits of similar timbre together to reflect, for instance, on the high moral tone of the 19th century, where the colour range is shades of dun and black and the background is blank.

This National Portrait Gallery will give enormous pleasure for years to come and give us huge pride in Our Nation.

The Magnificent New Entrance of the National Portrait Gallery at the Heart of Our Nation

The Public Gathered Because there was a Barrier

The Mayor, Hotter in Real Life

Darling Grayson: What a Perennial

Bianca: Not necessarily Alive but Superb

The Darling King with Marcus and a Corner of Andy Murray Above

Margaret

Dear Precious Lilibet

One of the Earliest Portraits of a Muslim Greatness

Saturday 18th June 2023

Last night to Holland Park Opera for Hansel and Gretel. There’s a bit called ‘Evening Prayer’ which is very lovely.

I was to do the main course for the picnic. Coronation Quiche – second attempt. But when I looked in my bakeware cupboard, my quiche tin was still at Anthony Mottram’s where we had the Coronation. Had to buy another one – deeper. Sides of tart sank in blind baking. Mixture flowed over the sides. I couldn’t believe it. Howled and howled. Banged the work surface. Nobody came even though it turned out the next-door occupant had returned from Greece. Although not expected until Sunday. Managed somehow to get the loathsome pastry out of the tin and the egg gloop kitchen-papered from underneath.

Cousin Mowhampton, who was doing 1st course and pudding, texted beforehand, referring erroneously to Coronation chicken as my main. In this heat I hadn’t the energy to put her right. She was proposing smoked salmon, so I thought it wouldn’t matter anyway. But no, she’d done a tart too, with asparagus. Smoked salmon on top.

So menu-ing disaster of unprecedented proportions – two tart courses. And no help. The authorities didn’t lift a finger. You’d have thought, having ordered those of us who live alone to remain alone for six weeks without remission, they would be more than prepared for such a nightmare, swooping down at once with measures.

Tomorrow is my garden opening (the second this season). The Maharajah only likes chocolate for dessert. Nigella said her vegan choc cake was easy. I tried six shops for ‘instant expresso coffee’ and ‘coconut butter’ … the cake blew up out of its tin and took twice as long to cook as stated. Still sunk in the middle. The bits that broke off I ate. Disgusting. Horribly sweet. The vegan ‘icing’ separated out – noxious oil oozed forth. Had to throw it away. I said to the Maharajah, ‘If this doesn’t make up for the evils of the British in India, nothing will.’

My Vic Sponge though went like a dream. I felt guilty because Queen Victoria was an Imperialist and took possession of the Koh-i-Nor. Until that is I turned it out. Strange lumps of sugar disbursed through the cake fabric. Somehow hadn’t mixed properly in the machine. Why? Why? Why?

So Vic Sponge will probably be filthy as well.

Who ever heard of the sugar not mixing properly? I didn’t like to run the blades too long for fear of curdling in this weather.

The Corrie Quiche, by the way, was, as the Germans says, obergecheesen. The tarragon didn’t come through. Possibly because not all the mixture would fit in.

So have got that to do all over again – possibly for second Glydenbourniana.

Can’t go on much longer.

Nigella’s Vegan Choc Cake. Doesn’t have any Choc in it, now I think of It. Horror show

Nigella’s Vegan Choc ‘icing’… So useful

Fate of the Choc ‘Icing’ – about £5m in the Bin

Wednesday 14th June 2023

I wore my tartan tracksuit for the visit to the Rosslyn Chapel.

Royston King comments that people are fading from my commentary. Maybe decor, conservation, the fight to save the Monarchy and keep out Socialism have taken over – yet another evil consequence of the Response to the Pandemic.

Our van was quiet for this tour of Scotland. Moira MacMatron was last min cancel, owing to the severe illness of her previous husband and her daughter’s father, he being once a world-figure in the illicit photography line, now in unique possession of a council property in Sloane Avenue. As it happened he didn’t pass in our Scottish days and could have been more than happily accommodated in a trailer going on behind our van, with the necessary number of nurses, tubes and flexes for sure.

But it was not to be.

As it was, banter was subdued being one lady less. Laura Malcolm and Matt Driver were on the back seat; Laura’s air was of being there on sufferance. She wanted the window opened or shut again. There was the menacing possibility of van sickness held in reserve.

Before the women were all in the back, their banter mounting to such a frenzy, especially when we passed near the graves of Moira McMatron’s parents, that the Laird, at the wheel and often trying to recount his perilous upward journey through life beset with trouble, was on the verge of hurling the van and its occupants into a ditch.

The second day of the Tour was the only day I wore my tartan tracksuit. I modelled it against the outside of the Rosslyn Chapel, which gave me the opportunity to observe the precision of the work, the ordered design, parts of which could feature in a classical building. Ruskin didn’t get it quite right about Gothic architecture.

The Rosslyn Chapel is utterly superb, a most satisfying grooved block from the outside, with incredible stone interest (many colours) and carvings. Within astonishing, a mystery of arches, pillars and carved trimming at every opportunity. Photography not allowed inside. You can understand why crackpot myths have attached to the place. It is unlike any other Gothic building to the extent it could well have manifested from the Beyond. It’s in the middle of nowhere, just occurring randomly in fields. And the people who made it, carving away so incessantly, were they somehow possessed?

In Tartan at Rosslyn

Rosslyn Chapel: What Rhythm to the Arcades

Rosslyn Chapel: Really giving Satisfaction

Rosslyn Chapel: Actually a Fragment but You wouldn’t Know it. It’s just the Choir of what was Meant to be a Much Larger Church 

Thursday 8th June 2023

By great good mercy, my tartan tracksuit arrived in time, having been scheduled not to. What a quality of fabric! So springy and shiny. American.

Laura Malcolm insisted on walk-on luggage only. I nearly broke down with the planing – lobbying at Malin Goetz for sample sachets, only one spare pair of shoes, the tartan tracksuit (too bad the clash with the tartan topcoat by Oliver Spencer which everybody adores but I think a sack), for the Sunday repeating items from the Friday travelling outfit; finally on the Monday wearing all day the suit by Sandro (grease stain on the elbow from the club lunch with Rufus Pitman: phoned Val who said tetracarbon’s been banned for home use) because direct from the airport I was diarised to go to a nurturing dinner for American Patrons at our favourite museum.

I don’t like to admit it, but existing from a tiny case for three days – well, it was soothing. No great dynastic caravan of possessions, the agony of maintenance, archiving, scheduling and control as well as dragging about. Just the little box with everything in it, neat and contained. Reduced, the items somehow more precious.

On arrival the Laird gave us our individual laminated cards displaying the number of the minibus. He is now self-identified as Gay although not including any trousers-down type of work of course. At Loch Lomond calling-card-sized cards of premium quality were distributed telling us of the next departure time. We took a ferry across the Loch to Luss. There were islands where nobody lives. One of them had rare birds nesting but you couldn’t see them. The general theme was the Nature and its glory. We dined at Lake of Mentieth which is the only Lake in Scotland. There were islands there too, one of which had once had Mary, Queen of Scots on it, on the run from somewhere or other.

The style of service at the dinner was novel. Scotland is a Socialist country but the view of the Lake from the dining table was unsurpassed. Possibly attention could have been paid to the state of the carpet. The breakfast buffet table was already in place with an odd hotpotch of cloths unartfully arranged with gaps through which the mini-packets of disastrous breakfast cereals could be glimpsed. The waiter said, ‘What do you want now?’ with undisguised impatience. We said, ‘Cheese,’ so a bundle of knives was dumped down. The actual cheese was first class though.

After dinner we visited some Lake-side friends of the Lairds (he is one of the Three Scottish Tenors) in their new modern house which showed clearly the influence of Virgil Grayson. Below was a straight hedge marking where a running track had been made by the former owners (magnates of some kind) for Eric Liddell to practise on. The magnates are now gone and the estate split up with Socialist progress.

The Lake of Mentieth from the hotel garden

The Lake of Mentieth: The island in the distance once Sheltered Mary, Queen of Scots

Tuesday 23rd May 2023

Yesterday was Chelsea Flower Show Press Day:

Brian May

Piers Morgan

Joanna Lumley

Dear Vanessa

Anna Maxwell Martin was in the lunch room

Dame Judi

Derek Jacobi

Bruno Tonioli

Sophie Raworth of course

Warrant Officer Johnson Beharry VC

O! the great ranks of the famous, the numberless battalions.

I forgot to mention – Stoker and Amanda. How could I?

There were gardens and flowers. The best one had simple rough-cast walls in ochre pink with trees and irises. Inspired by Cedric Morris and Benton End, which our favourite Museum Director has rescued. Sarah Price, the designer, is a painter as well. Her garden married art and nature as rarely, if ever, seen at Chelsea.  Simple, restrained and delicious. Colour primarily. And no message. Remarkable lack of sermonising. It didn’t win Best in Show, of course.

But really, one had to get on. Who was everybody and, above all, what were they wearing, if anything?

I started outside Chelsea’s sacred precincts. Clive Myrie was walking in my street, where he lives. He has a neat blue mac for walking. I thought, Why not? Accost. As we know from the incident on the way to Lincoln Cathedral in December 2021, when Royston King commanded, ‘Clive Myrie! Clive Myrie! Stop the car,’ the younger person of colour looks up to the older one as a role model. ‘I’ll be seeing Royston,’ I told Clive Myrie. whose guard let up at once.

Then in the VIP Lunch Room at Chelsea, where Royston had gained admittance for me and one of his guests (I would like it to be known that I was present at Chelsea Flower Show press day in my capacity as an important contributor to Dainty Lady TV) I saw a fabulous red velvet suit. And the person in it maddeningly familiar. I seized my chance at the buffet. It was Topman. Unbelievable. ‘Me too!’ I shrieked. My Topman silver dress coat, which I’ve begun to wash with success. What an outfit boost! I’d been in outfit agony but had the brain-wave of combining with the Club Monaco brown trousers to give a country feel. ‘I’m sure I should know who you are,’ I said. ‘I’m Ore,’ he said. ‘I won’t be able to fit into this suit much longer.’ It’s true. The trousers were spray-on. Back at the table, Royston’s guest, luckily mad for names, got Ore fixed within seconds using his device. Ore Obuba, winner of Strictly in 2016. He’d also collected Bruno Tonioli with ease, who was standing right by us in a pink suit. I’d loved to have known about that suit. But we disagreed over Anna Maxwell Martin whom he said was Nicola Walker, although finally conceding. But I was wrong about Nicky Chapman who was not Sophie Raworth, although their frocks were similar.

A secret: many of the celebrities – their clothes aren’t expensive, you know. They like shiny and bold prints. The essence is – how will it photograph?

The red velvet suit of Ore Obuba was not in fact velvet. It was corduroy. But appeared velvet.

The people on the Grenada stand who weren’t celebrities had done so much with layering. One of them had three layers in different cream shades with a navy jacket on top.

Layering is so important for added outfit interest.

Dame Judi was very much draped. She takes Minty’s arm now for all perambulation and there’s a special sweep to their exits and entrances, both being trained.

Only selected guests are permitted to stay on for the Royal Visit. I ventured to Chelsea Harbour and avoided breakdown. I always fear breakdown at Chelsea Harbour re: fabric choices. That’s another story. So I returned to watch the arrival of the King and Queen from the street. The State Bentley swept in from the Embankment, huge Standard flying; it could have been a great heraldic tournament horse from the Middle Ages.

Who are These People? Does Anyone know? Huge Attention wherever they Went

Sophie Raworth: Off-Air Footwear

Warrant Officer Johnson Beharry VC

Joanna Lumley in Hat

Bruno Tonioli: But that Suit? What House?

Outfit: a Swimsuit

Best in Show – But Not. Sarah Price Landscapes Garden: Love the Sandy Gaps

Best in Show – but Not. Intricate but the Overall Effect Simple and Restrained

Ore in Red

More of Ore: Fitting Well but He wasn’t Sure for How Much Longer

The King and Queen Arrive

Friday 19th May 2023

Rufus Pitman wanted an emergency lunch to pick over the Coronation. He’s recently been ennobled to a Club. It can’t be named and if graphed, it’s immediate expulsion. Let’s just say it’s like having one’s own total stately home in the middle of London. Coffee was taken in a Library so vast the coffee server at his coffee serving table was a distant speck from where we sat at the far end of the room. I always thought you had to be Archbishop to belong to this particular Club. I never thought I’d be within in my life.

Rufus is an Archbishop really… in all but name.

Mainly Rufus was concerned with the King’s Delay. Was He early? Or the Waleses late? It is known that the latter were at home filming themselves in their get-ups (or having themselves filmed) for Insta with the result that they were two minutes late. But the King’s Horses were too fast so He was six minutes early.

I went on to the Gay Mother who said, ‘Nobody wants a mad dentist.’ She was referring to a rellie, long gone, who came to a bad end on account of being a dentist and mad. We viewed ‘Blue Light’ on TV which prompted a history of swearing. ‘F wasn’t liked,’ the Gay Mother said. ‘The Land Girls didn’t like it. They said, ‘bloody’ and ‘bugger’. As did Charlie Clatworthy from the village. ‘But things have changed,’ the Gay Mother said.

I planned menus: hake with Venetian sauce (Rick), Smoked Haddock au creme with breadcrumb topping (Nigel). Finally moussaka (Jane, but I used only one egg and didn’t mix two tablespoons of the bechamel with egg and feta with the meat sauce: Jane’s gone out of date somewhat. Much of her drive was to make post-War ingredients taste of something by adding vinegar and sugar and so on. But now we don’t need that).

Fortunately the Gay Mother liked all the menus which was a mercy since she’s taken to not liking quite a few things in a big way in her 100th year. Of the moussaka she said, ‘It’s got Yorkshire pudding on top.’ Perhaps this is a post-Brexit view.

At my London home I’ve been doing up my private bathroom. It would have been quicker to build Chartres Cathedral. We imagine Michelangelo happily on his back painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling, expressing away with abandon. I wonder how often he found he’d left the scraper down below. Or couldn’t get the lid off a paint pot. Or couldn’t remember where he’d put down a particular tool. Or didn’t realise he’d got brown paint on his hand and accidentally smeared it where it wasn’t wanted? Or got to the end of a section and found he’d missed a bit at the beginning. Or cut himself. Or had whole days feeling below parr and defeated by the task.

I’ve painted my bathroom Pegnoir. The young woman in the Farrow and Ball shop didn’t know it’s the French for dressing gown.

Thursday 11th May 2023

Having a Royal Family means that we are all Royal. If proof is needed, at the Luncheon celebration on Sunday in my neighbourhood (astonishing number of Guardian reading North Londoners only too glad to turn out) there was a small boy with a gold crown on.

On Friday we took Guys and Dolls at the Bridge Theatre as our Coronation Gala. Had never been there before. Had no idea. Astonishing venue. Huge, with audience on all four sides. Just what’s needed to revivify the theatre. Production of Guys and Dolls thrilling. Intensely musical, staging in the round with standing audience following the actors around from one part of the stage to another. Talk about living theatre. It didn’t end either. The performers carried on singing and there was a mass dance-in with remaining audience.

It’s a marvellous piece, not a bit sentimental, completely real but uplifting and joyful. What I’ve never heard before is the sophistication of the music – how it goes from a light ditty, to grand and operatic to jazzy syncopation almost in one phrase.

Tuesday 9th May 2023

From making both the Coronation Quiche and Coronation Chicken. Corrie Quiche by the way destined a Coronation Classic for sure. Tarragon the master touch. Broad beans not nec. Peas would do instead. Had to go to 13 shops to get the materials.

Just so thankful it went off so utterly. Still reeling. They didn’t self-wet, trip or even keel completely. Crowds were huge. Republicans were flung into dungeons.

The last Coronation dominated our imagination but really nobody alive had ever seen a Coronation, not properly, only bits and photos. We thought we knew about a Coronation was. But we didn’t. Do we now? We’ve seen one. What was it? A raging glory, you can be certain of that: Byzantine, medieval, this must have been how the Early Church was, stiff with ritual, insane level of frockage and needlework, insignia, regalia, not necessarily immediately obvs what for, but totally superb. Element of the ridic completely vital. Remember the alternative: the May Day Parade in Red Square.

Val phoned afterwards: he went back to bed when they put the wendy house round the King. I think he should have tried harder. Royston King was caught up in the drama of the mounting regalia, climaxing in the Crown. But he had mugged up to be on the balcony with Tina Brown for CNN.

A Coronation Ritual wouldn’t of itself be a huge hit with the public, not like a wedding or a funeral. But when they emerged from the Chapel of St Edward the Confessor with their crowns on (never mind a different one for him) they looked every child’s dream of a King and Queen. Leaving the Abbey he was a dead ringer for one of those medieval monarchs in an icon.

I adored the unexplained figures who stood stock still at the two western corners of the cosmati pavement throughout, so emblazoned with heraldry and insignia they were more like art installations – certainly not people. I think it might have been Garter and the Earl Marshall.

O! the glory and wonder of Our Nation. Grown men got up like that.

But the meaning hardly had to battle through the odd ritual. Really the foundation of Our Nation. Service. Duty. Absolutism contained. Twice at least the Law was mentioned. The King must rule according to the Law. That was how England, as it was then, got ahead. Rule of Law. Habeas Corpus. The beginning of a notion of proper justice from the Middle Ages.

Robert Nevil said it best: ‘It’s like decorating a Christmas tree. They stick more and more baubles on.’

Exactly. Not just the King undressed, the act of obeisance, but the whole thing: the putting on of Kingship, the burden and, in the words, the terrific hectoring re: the responsibilities of office, the care of the less fortunate, the requirement of mercy.

Not every King, many buried in the very Abbey where Charles 111 was crowned, lived up to their Coronation Oath, but all the same, there could be no better start than to be given a jolly good dressing down at their Coronation.

The Monarchy unites us in essentially Christian values, which, whether we are believers or not, we all share just as the sacred setting is one which we all understand.