Magic in the Daylight

Prince Charles weds his Lady Diana in the century’s grandest royal match

Charles who?” asked the singer, forgetting for the moment the Prince’s warm admiration of her top notes. Her agent hastily explained, his client hastily accepted, and this week, Kiri Te Kanawa, originally from New Zealand and lately of the Royal Opera, will let her shimmering soprano loose on a three-minute anthem by Handel. She will be accompanied by a trumpet soloist and 95 other musicians drawn from three orchestras in which the bridegroom has taken a particular interest.

Barring an act of God, the Irish Republican Army, the nation’s unemployed or any combination thereof, Te Kanawa’s audience will include one happy couple, 26 prominent clerics, a carefully vetted congregation of 2,500 crowding each other for pew space under the great painted dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral, more than 75 technicians manning 21 cameras, and an estimated worldwide television audience of 750 million. They will be tuning in the century’s greatest, grandest nuptial, the sort of love story Hollywood doesn’t make any more and the kind of spectacle it can’t even afford any more.

In plan and in prospect, the marrying of H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, 32, to Lady Diana Spencer, 20, the well-born and distinctively dishy commoner, is a fairy tale of present pomp and past glory, a last page from the tattered book of empire with the gold leaf still intact. It is by Rudyard Kipling out of Walter Bagehot, a ceremony intended to refurbish and reaffirm tradition.

“The monarchy’s mystery,” Bagehot wrote in 1867, “is its life.

We must not let in daylight upon magic.” This wedding on the cusp of high noon, in front of a world short on ritual and parched for romance, is in fact one grand pass of the royal wand, a masterly and pricey piece of prestidigitation in which, at once, the old values are upheld, the future is assured and everyone can be queen for a day.

Some of these values and traditions have played false—indeed, may have betrayed—those of Her Majesty’s subjects who, out of rage and frustration, have been rioting in the streets, burning cars, looting stores and combatting the police. The month past has seen the worst outbreak of violence in Great Britain in a century, which has cast a long and smoky shadow over this splendid national occasion.

It seems easier for everyone, however, to give three cheers and subsume the flames that came from Brixton and Manchester and Liverpool in the more congenial firelight of the wedding-eve pyrotechnics at Hyde Park and the 101 celebratory bonfires ignited all over the kingdom, from Scotland and Wales to the Shetlands and the Scillys, even to the embattled north of Ireland. “When politics are in rather a mess,” remarks Lady Elizabeth Longford, a historian and biographer, “any institution that is above politics gets an extra dose of glamour.”

That may not go far among Great Britain’s almost 3 million unemployed, but it enhances the monarchy and sustains every monarchist in the realm. Says Robert Lacey, author of Majesty, a study of Elizabeth II and the House of Windsor: “The reason the monarchy survives in the 1980s is that, through a combination of luck and also good training, the House of Windsor has continued to produce persons who mirror the national virtues.” Adds Politics Professor Richard Rose of Scotland’s University of Strathclyde: “There are those who are positive about the monarchy, and those who are lukewarm. There aren’t many anti people.” Especially now, when the prevailing wedding fever seems to have raised the public temperature way past lukewarm. Indeed, a survey published last week in the liberal Guardian showed that a resounding 76% of those polled felt the advantages of the monarchy outweigh its costs (estimated at a yearly $25 million) and that 67% considered that the big bundle being lavished on the wedding was money well spent.

Of course, there were all those revenues from wedding-souvenir sales and the tourist trade to consider, although tourism surprisingly fell a bit short of expectations, with rooms to spare at several major London hotels. An extra $200 million for souvenirs and $440 million more in tourism were expected to augment the national coffers. But in the matter of budget and expense vs. value rendered, the Windsors, who are monarchs not only for a nation but for the international media, found themselves up against a conventional show-business maxim: It is only when you bomb out that you’re a profligate; if you’re a hit, nobody cares how much your show cost.

The Windsors are presiding over one of history’s biggest smashes, and against all odds, one of its most enduring. Anyone who thinks for a moment that such show-business comparisons might be crass would do well to consider that, while Britain may not be the most flamboyant nation on earth, it is surely the most theatrical. The pageantry, and indeed the calibrated delirium, of the wedding celebration are the distillation not only of national spirit but of a shared dramatic soul.

Look at London, a city dressed like a vast stage, buses painted with bows, and parks blooming with Charles’ royal crest outlined in precisely planted blossoms, 4,500 pots of flowers lining the wedding route. Remember all the designers working in secrecy: the milliners blocking straw and trimming it with quills; Dress Designers David and Elizabeth Emanuel, holed up in their Mayfair workshop like a couple of atomic scientists, working on Lady Diana’s wedding gown, plus two or three backup designs in case of a breach in security; the Worshipful Company of Gardeners, one of London’s ancient guilds (founded in 1345, thank you), which was given the task of assigning one of its members to concoct the wedding bouquet. Think about Major Julien T. Kenwood, 36, of the Mounted Military Police, who, along with four other mounted officers, will lead Lady Diana in her Glass Coach from Clarence House to St. Paul’s, and who admits that the whole thing “is a fairly daunting prospect. It would be wrong to say we’re not feeling the old butterflies.” Or about Designer Bruce Oldfield, turning out dresses for several prominent guests, who dithers: “It’s a nightmare. It’s great. It’s fantastic.” Or Kiri Te Kanawa, who says simply that she is “terrified.” The frantic pace, the giddy nerves, the spiraling expectation that threatens to run away and never quite does: all of it comes down to one thing. It is an understandable preopening stage fright for what will be, for one day and one day only, the greatest show on earth.

Like all great extravaganzas, the royal wedding requires a producer (the Lord Chamberlain) and a director (Lieut. Colonel John F.D. Johnston, who recently received a knighthood for his organizational skills). It also, of course, has a supporting cast of thousands. Along with the home-grown aristocrats, there are all the invited guests: political (Nancy Reagan); monarchical (Queen Beatrix of The Netherlands, the King and Queen of Sweden, the Duke and Duchess of Liechtenstein); social (Sabrina Guinness, Sir Hugh Casson); and sentimental (Flo Moore, who kept Charles’ Cambridge rooms in order; Henry and Cora Sands, who provided Charles with some homemade bread during holidays in Eleuthera; Patrick and Nancy Robertson, an American couple whose son Lady Diana played nanny to in 1979 and 1980). Inevitably there are also a few conspicuous by their absence, like King Juan Carlos of Spain, who was miffed that the Prince and Princess of Wales chose to embark on their honeymoon cruise from Gibraltar, a British colony that the Spanish consider their own.

But these are cameos; faces in the crowd. The supporting roles—the backbone of the British repertory system, and one of the many small glories of the British cinema—give flesh, size and human dimension to the sometimes overwhelming scale of the spectacle. Among them:

> Chief Petty Officer David Avery, 38, of the Royal Navy; brisk, authoritative and more than a little wary. Avery baked the official wedding cake to be served up to 120 guests at the Buckingham Palace wedding “breakfast” (noon to 4 p.m.). The recipe, he says, “is all in my head. It isn’t written down anywhere, you understand. No, I will not give you a single detail.” Avery and an assistant, Training Officer Lieutenant Motley, journeyed to the palace six weeks ago to give the bride-to-be an approving peek at their design. The batter had gone into the oven a month earlier. “The longer a cake matures, the more it relaxes,” Avery says. “If we’d known last year that he was going to get married, we would have baked it last year.” Avery hand-picked every cashew, cherry, walnut and currant for the cake in a two-day session code-named “Operation Sultana.” He added a little Navy rum (“Just for flavor. You don’t want people to get paralytic”) and baked the largest layer for 8½ hours. The result, which was stashed behind a locked door at the Royal Navy Cookery School, measured out at 4½ ft. and 224 Ibs., 49 of which go for marzipan and ivory white icing.

> Robert Gooden, 41, owner of Worldwide Butterflies Ltd. and Lullingstone Silk Farm, who projects the somewhat abstract intensity of a man on a perpetual hunt for the perfect specimen. Lullingstone provided the silk for Lady Diana’s wedding dress. Nestled in the rolling hills of Dorset, hard by Gooden’s mansion, it is the only silk farm in England. Its worms, which dine on mulberry leaves, have provided silk for the wedding dress of Queen Elizabeth and for the cloak Charles wore when he was invested as Prince of Wales. Started by Lady Hart Dyke in the 1930s with encouragement from Queen Mary, Lullingstone almost went under when its founder died in 1975. It was then that Gooden, who had been doing rather well with his butterfly company and who had reeled and woven silk as a boy, stepped in. “My wife and I wanted Lullingstone not only because of our past interest, but because of the royal tradition,” he explains. “The royal family set an example of gentility, a way of life none of us could normally aspire to. They have a steadying influence.”

> Maris Cole, a primary-school teacher from Great Somerford and her husband Hector, 41, who teaches iron working at a local secondary school. The Coles were chosen to craft the 20-ft.-long handwrought iron gates that will stretch across the entrance to Highgrove, the 18th century Georgian mansion of mellow brick near Tetbury, where Charles and Diana will set up housekeeping. Maris—”the artist in the family,” according to Hector—sketched the classic design, which is to be executed by her husband. “We toiled for many hours in our study,” Maris admits. “Our biggest problem was trying to decide what Prince Charles would like. We finally decided that in our humble opinion something fairly simple would be O.K.” Tetbury residents are paying the $5,000 cost of the gates by taking up a collection and selling a commemorative envelope of the wedding day, a scheme launched by a local insurance man, Jeremy Gahagan. “The business is booming,” he reports. “Often when they come in, they also ask me for a quote on car or life insurance.”

> Major Michael Parker, 33, an antiques dealer and reserve officer, who says lightly: “I like burning things. I am a pyromaniac.” Parker is the man directly in charge of what he says will be “the largest firework display in 250 years,” a figure that roughly but deliberately recalls the pyrotechnic extravagance that celebrated the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1749. It was for that occasion that Handel composed his Music for the Royal Fireworks, which will also accompany the meteor shower of bombshells, flash reports, bombettes, pirouettes, Catherine wheels, saucissons, serpents and good old-fashioned detonations over Hyde Park on the wedding eve this week. Parker’s field lieutenant is an intense 29-year veteran of Paines Fireworks Co., Roly Harrison, who admits that, when the time comes for ignition, the entire display is “essentially a one-man show.” He leaves little doubt who that man is. “Roly is like an actor who goes onstage,” explains John Decker of Paines. “He’s the one who presses the buttons. If Roly isn’t feeling up to snuff, he’ll put on a lousy fireworks display. It’s a fine art. You have to have an artistic flair for entertaining.”

With all that flare in the air, and all the strong support on the ground, it is little wonder that the stars of the show seemed, especially during all the weeks of feverish preparation, to have been virtually swept off the stage. Charles still pressed on with his ceremonial schedule, even taking a side trip to Dartmoor Prison, whose inmates presented him with a ball-and-chain paperweight. Lady Diana showed up in the stands at Wimbledon, looking fetching and diverting spectator attention from the antics of John McEnroe on Centre Court. The two also appeared together in public—at a wedding and a film premiere—and managed to seem at ease, both with themselves and their adoring subjects. Lady Diana’s youthful radiance stole the show last week at the Queen’s garden party. Allowing an elderly blind guest to feel her engagement ring, she joked: “I’d better not lose this before Wednesday or they won’t know who I am.” Her outright sensual allure has smartened up her fiance considerably.

Charles, who had previously projected a kind of steady, Urquhart-plaid personality, seemed to pick up some more dash, as if he were beginning to realize rather belatedly what his sporting friends would happily have told him: that he had made a damned lucky catch.

Charles did not always appear to think so; not at first anyway. When he and Diana posed on the back terrace of Buckingham Palace on their engagement day, he acted as if he had made a wise choice, a becoming choice, but perhaps not a compelling one. “Are you in love?” asked a reporter. His fiancée beamed, blushed and said yes. The Prince’s answer: “Whatever love means”—a remark of rather too much objectivity, hinting at even a touch of weariness.

“My impression was that they had scarcely spent very much time together,” remarks Anthony Holden, whose biography of the couple, Their Royal Highnesses: The Prince and Princess of Wales, was published in England last month. “They hadn’t spent as much time as any of us might have done with the person we were going to marry.” Off on a five-week tour of Australia and New Zealand, Venezuela and the U.S., the Prince saw his Lady’s face on newsstands and TV screens all around him and spoke to her frequently by phone. “It was the ultimate case of absence makes the heart grow fonder,’ ” insists Holden. “He was falling in love with her from a distance, and I think it is quite clear this thing is going to become a genuine love match.”

If that is true, one wonders only what took the Prince so long. He was lagging far behind the media and the public, which wasted no time in elevating Lady Diana into a stellar attraction. Movie stars have become princesses before. Never, however, has a Princess looked so much like a movie star; certainly no Queen-to-be has ever done so much for a pair of blue jeans. Lady Diana’s seemingly paradoxical quality of patrician funkiness has caught the spirit of a generation that fancies itself a little more romantic than those of the ’70s and ’60s and acts, at least outwardly, a good deal more conservatively. She is already widely imitated—the hair, the clothes, the ruffled collars —but never duplicated. Certainly the reason is that she is unique, as thousands of desperate Di-clones and all the merchants who minister to them have discovered.

By the early evening of the wedding day, London’s D.H. Evans should have a copy of the bridal gown in its Oxford Street window. The knock-off is the work of Ellis Bridals, which turns out copies “whenever there is a royal wedding,” according to Brenda Ellis, 33, granddaughter of the firm’s founders. “We simply reproduce the dress so the public can have it. It’s the same thing now.”

Well, not quite. The Ellis cutters and sewers will be making use of new technology: a video-tape machine with a pause button. “When we get a good picture of Lady Di,” Ellis says, “we can freeze it.” Elk’s reports that 200 of the copies have been ordered so far. “Every shop in England that has a royal window wants one.”

Taking careful note of all the duplication and trend setting, a Major Ralph Rochester of Malt Field, Devon, dispatched a letter to the Times of London. “Sir,” he wrote, “I have observed of late numerous girls who are taking pains to look like Lady Diana; but of the boys I have observed, none is making the least effort to look like the Prince of Wales. How should this be?” One reason may be that the Prince steers clear of trends. His suits are made by Johns & Pegg, Ltd., exclusively military tailors until World War II, which made the naval ceremonial day coat in which the Prince will approach the altar. “We keep up with fashion, but we don’t lead fashion,” says Peter Johns.

Charles’ shirts come from the top-drawer Turnbull & Asser; the palace thriftily returns them now and again to have the collars replaced.

If the Prince has picked up a little pizazz by association with Lady Diana, she has assumed the beginnings of a royal aspect. Even though she chose to have “obey” deleted from the marriage service, she has not yet dealt successfully with the problem of monarchical chapeaux. Women of the royal family are all encouraged and expected to wear hats for formal occasions. Lady Diana’s early efforts to comply with this code have resulted in a couple of wowzers, including one that looked as if the mother ship from Close Encounters of the Third Kind had made a forced landing on her noggin. Under such circumstances, photos sometimes catch fleeting moments when a kind of uncertainty, even a suggestion of strain, seems to flicker across her face. Royals do have a peculiar knack for looking out of it, and when Charles drove off from Ascot in his dark blue Aston Martin with Diana at his side, both had the slightly dazed look of a couple who had just scored big on Let’s Make a Deal.

It is in the realm of gifts, indeed, where the royal wedding began to look less like a wide-screen spectacular and more like the world’s most deluxe television quiz show. Without undue straining, the voice of a master of ceremonies comes filtering through the imagination, asking the traditional question—”Johnny, tell us what’s in the jackpot for this wonderful couple”—and getting, from an agitated announcer who sounds like a tobacco auctioneer just graduated from broadcast school, a far from conventional reply:

“Bob, we’ve got presents, I’m telling you, from the four corners of the world!

From President and Mrs. Reagan in the U.S., a Steuben glass bowl christened ‘The Crusaders’! From the village of Doughton, bless ’em all, a sheet-iron weather vane for Highgrove! From the far-off land of Tonga, a bedspread, presented by—I want to get this name right—King Taufa’ahau Tupou IV and his wife, Queen Mata’aho, and hand-knitted by the Queen herself; let’s have a round of applause for them both! From the Sedgemoor district council in Somerset — how about this? — a ton of peat! A nickel-silvered — oh, this is cute — a nickel-silvered mousetrap in a diamante-jeweled presentation case from West Country Councillor Vernon Gould! One complete bedroom set from Canada! Two additional beds! Three engineering apprenticeships donated by the Greater Manchester Council! Western boots for Charles, Western chaps for Diana, both from Texas and both from Anne Arm strong, the former American ambassador! A herb garden for Highgrove from the Cranleigh Group of Women’s Institutes in Surrey! A lace cushion from the Royal School of Needlework! Two cases of specially blended ‘C and D’ malt whisky from Macallans Distillery! And — wait until you ladies see this — from Geba, in Germany, kitchen furnishings for every culinary pursuit you can imagine, valued at a grand total of $20,000! And, if you think that’s something, just take a look at what we’ve got behind the curtain!”

What’s behind the curtain will be revealed in due diplomatic course—the palace usually makes the official announcement of wedding gifts soon after the ceremony—but one thing is already clear. The royalnewlyweds are coming up a little short on the practical end. “Actually,” confessed a palace spokesman, “they have not got a thing.” There is an abundance of silver bowls and candlesticks, of course. But Charles has joked about camping “on my orange boxes” at Highgrove, and there are those who are taking him at close to his word. Despite an annual income of well over $1 million, it seems that the Prince still lacks certain basics.

“Most of the presents received in the past by royalty were never used,” remarks H.B. Brooks-Baker of Debrett’s Peerage Ltd., publishers of Debrett’s Peerage and Baronetage. “Contrary to popular belief, the Prince doesn’t really have anything at all beyond museum pieces, such as signed pieces of furniture and valuable paintings. He doesn’t have breakfast china or a toaster.”

To correct this situation, Charles and Diana raised eyebrows by registering a list of wedding gifts at the General Trading Company, a tony London emporium with a royal warrant to supply fancy goods. Gift givers who are bored by silver and feel that the Germans have pretty well swept the kitchen-equipment field can drop by the store and have a look at the list of some 300 desired items, which include omelette and sauté pans, salt and pepper mills in natural wood, dishes for casseroles and soufflés, 24 champagne glasses, 18 highball tumblers, a dark green tablecloth and two shocking-pink lamps.

If something slightly more elevated and a little less suburban is required, one might consider the white Crown Staffordshire china cockatoos ($128 the pair). One might also consider real cockatoos, but the palace has slapped a firm injunction on live pets.

Rear Admiral Sir Hugh Janion is the man at the palace in charge of the reception and cataloguing of all gifts, from chaps to cockatoos. Each gift must also be checked out thoroughly by a security specialist to see that it is not a surprise package, just as each old Wren-restored inch of St. Paul’s (1710) has been gone over daily by bomb-sniffing dogs. Every foot of the two-mile route from Buckingham Palace to the cathedral has been secured by rooftop marksmen from Scotland Yard and closed-circuit television cameras. Still, the royals will remain achingly vulnerable. The horse-drawn coaches that will conduct them to the ceremony at a stately 8 m.p.h. would be pervious to a strong slingshot. Queen Elizabeth has been adamant in her refusal to take any extra protective precautions, even after an unemployed youth fired six blank shots barely 10 ft. from where she rode during the annual trooping of the color in June.

Security has been tight for weeks —British Airways dispatched 40 of its top investigators with lists of “known terrorists” supplied by Interpol to inform local police the world over. Baggage checks at London airports have been especially meticulous. Many of the foreign dignitaries—more than a dozen Presidents, nine members of reigning royal families, three former sovereigns, fifteen Commonwealth heads of state, twelve governors-general—will be arriving with their own security agents, all of whom are required by British law to hand over their guns. This applies also to the U.S. Secret Service, which will be keeping an eye on Mrs. Reagan. Precautions have become so stringent that London’s bobbies, who will be spaced every 6 ft. on both sides of the processional route, have been instructed to turn away when the royals pass, and to watch the crowd.

Despite such safeguards, the event aspires to be a spectacle by DeMille, not a thriller by Hitchcock. There are parties everywhere and tours for every bank account. The celebrators at the office windows above the processional route will have paid Heather Pickering of “Corporate Capers” $390 per person for a prime view and a picnic hamper. They also have to clear computerized police security and wear an ID badge. Gate crashing will be prevented and order maintained by members of Pickering’s Kung Fu club. Near by at the Strand Palace Hotel, arrangements are even more elaborate. The management has turned a conference room and foyer into an indoor equivalent of an English garden, complete with sky, grass, waterfalls and fishpond.’Guests, each of whom will be billed $500, will arrive to a blast of trumpets. After they put away a hearty breakfast, they will be conducted to a “royal wedding box”—a room overlooking the Strand, specially decorated and provided with a TV set and a uniformed lackey. At. the moment Lady Diana’s coach passes, the hotel promises to release a spray of red rose petals and 1,000 doves.

The party of parties before the wedding will be the Queen’s ball at the palace, which has a guest list of 5,000. On the wedding evening, with the bride and groom safely off, the Queen just might drop in on Lady Elizabeth Shakerly’s rout. Lady Elizabeth discovered that rout is an 18th century term for what lesser mortals might call a blast. “I don’t dare do something with caviar and lobster because I can’t afford it,” the Lady explains. “I am having scrambled eggs and bacon from 7:30 on.” She is dishing it up at the ballroom of Claridge’s, a location that, unlike the menu, could not have been chosen for reasons of economy.

Possibly a couple of the pedestrians watching Lady Elizabeth’s guests disembarking from their Rollses and Daimlers will have wandered into Mayfair courtesy of the special gold, blue and white all-day ticket that London Transport is providing for the wedding day. At a cost of $4, it represents the cheapest tour around. The most expensive seems to be the trip organized by Mrs. Ian Routledge, who, for a fee of $5,000 (exclusive of air fare), will ferry 70 presumptive American socialites from London’s St. James’ club to stately country homes, where they can hobnob with the elite and perhaps catch a little refracted glory from the wedding.

Celebration plans were a good deal less rarefied out in the country. The Oxfordshire village of Weston-on-the-Green (pop. 300) scheduled an evening barbecue, dancing and lots of games, including at least two that are not recognized by the International Olympic Committee: a pillow fight on a greased pole laid across a swimming pool, and an English variation on the ancient Greek discus throw, in which the hurled object is a rubber Wellington boot.

In Tetbury, Master Thomas Charles Wortley, 5, will entertain local celebrators by re-enacting the wedding with Miss Karen Diana Welch, 9. There will be a wedding cake and toasts to both brides and grooms. Members of the younger set are not quite so cagey with the press as their elders, however, and a friend of the couple confided that Master Wortley thinks Miss Welch “soppy”; Miss Welch, in return, considers her make-believe spouse “an awful brat.”

While the Welly is hurled and the tots take the vows, Charles and Diana should have departed the palace breakfast and started, via British Rail, on the first stage of their honeymoon. They will spend their first two days as husband and wife at Broadlands, once the home of Earl Mountbatten of Burma. Ahead, after their two-week Mediterranean cruise aboard the Britannia, lie the more serious duties of government and the more exacting chores of their official life together.

Squaring off with the responsibility of setting a strong example is still one of the most important of British royal functions. It comes with the crown; it comes with the territory. Queen Elizabeth seems well aware of her symbolic roles, but she has also demonstrated a keen awareness of the force of her favor, a good working understanding of the subtle political interplay that keeps the British monarchy bobbing just above the breaking edge of parliamentary politics. “It is its capacity as a political deterrent, which is not less effective for being unused, that gives the crown, and the nation’s confidence in the person who wears it, their real importance,” notes British Constitutional Expert Ronald Butt. Unused, perhaps, but certainly not unfelt. Just recently the Queen let Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher know about her shock and regret over the street violence and, according to a very senior government official, expressed her clear wish that “reconciliation” be the objective that all races and religions should strive to achieve.

Charles is expected to continue, and perhaps even slightly increase, his mother’s stringent sense of the equilibrium of the monarchy. A few of his subjects are even anxious for him to give it an early start and have begun speculating on the possibility of the Queen’s abdicating. As far as the Windsors and those closest to them are concerned, such talk is pure fiction.

“Let’s get one thing quite straight,” the late Lord Mountbatten said in 1978. “The Queen is not going to abdicate. Everyone would advise her not to, beginning with the Prince of Wales.” Last week a source close to the royal family told TIME: “It is a fair assumption that the Queen will continue on the throne for as long as her health permits, and she, with her family’s support, feels she has a useful job to do for the state.” One member of the immediate family also made it quite clear that Charles will have a long wait—perhaps 20 or 25 years—before he takes the throne.

As the eleven royal coaches roll toward St. Paul’s, and an expected 2 million spectators jam the processional route, cheering, shouting, waving flags and banners, the princely bridegroom might still take a fast two-step forward in time, thinking about another occasion on which he will be in such a procession, hearing such cheering. But he will be carrying more years then, and a much graver weight. Better to dwell in the present, when the shadows have been beaten back for a few festive days, and a watching world wants to crown him and his bride with only one wish: Godspeed.

—By Jay Cocks.

Reported by Bonnie Angela and Mary Cronin/London