‘It’s the most English thing you could imagine!’

Shakespeare’s birthday celebrations in Stratford-upon-Avon may be a small-town affair, but it is one of the very few non-London dates that involves the diplomatic corps.

On Saturday 26 April no fewer than 18 ambassadors will attend the occasion, the world’s nations joining sundry Warwickshire dignitaries, Stratford’s mayoral chain gang, various Shakespearean bodies, the band of the Corps of Royal Engineers, the Coventry Corps of Drums, sweet little local schoolchildren in boaters, Morris men and some 20,000 delighted onlookers.

You never hear much about this terribly English event because it’s been going on for so long (since 1824) it is taken for granted. This year the president of the celebrations will be Sir Donald Sinden (84 and still puffing 20 a day) who with his colleagues process through the town, around the birthplace and along the Avon to Holy Trinity Church to lay posies and wreaths on the tomb. It is followed by a slap-up lunch (at which Sinden is Master of Ceremonies) in a marquee for 650 people, with speeches and toasts, including one to the Immortal Memory of Shakespeare.

This year at the lunch the annual Pragnell Award will be presented to Michael Boyd, director of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Two years ago Sinden himself won it. I admitted to him that despite reviewing umpteen productions in Stratford I had never attended its Shakespeare birthday celebrations. ‘Oh my dear, you must go! It’s the most English thing you could imagine, really very, very splendid — and the flowers in the chancel are just ablaze,’ he says in his kippered plum-pudding voice.

It’ll be a day of flags, banners and pomp. ‘It’s my job to unfurl the Union flag,’ he says proudly. ‘I’ll be in my morning suit and top hat and I have asked others beside me to do the same.