In the final volume of his collected letters, Patrick Leigh Fermor recalls watching the wedding of Princess Anne in 1973 in Diana Cooper’s bedroom because she had a colour telly. “She was in an enormous bed, so we all lay on it side by side drinking champagne, watching the procession and the service. It was all very obsolete and indescribably moving; it is one of the few things – pageantry – that the English are better at than anyone (the only thing, it seems, at this moment!) A lovely morning.”
Well, he could have done and said just the same today watching the wedding of Princess Eugenie to Jack Brooksbank, a former nightclub manager. Most of my office was riveted to the screens for the beginning, at least, of the happy event. I even heard someone observe: “everyone loves a wedding”. Even the agnostics liked the hymns.
My own thoughts were as follows: What, no veil? Not sure about the amount of back on display with the dress: was that a statement about her back operation? Doesn’t she look happy? Doesn’t he look nervous? Look at Andrea Bocelli’s black spectacles, poor man.
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