When Rachel Cooke went to meet historian David Starkey, often called the rudest man in Britain, she expected it to be war. But that was before she started laughing at his tales of a first date in the Beaver`s RetreatIn the afternoon of 3 June, the Queen will mark her diamond jubilee by sailing the Thames from Hammersmith to the Old Royal Naval College at Greenwich aboard the royal barge, the Spirit of Chartwell. In her wake will travel a flotilla of 1,000 boats decorated in streamers and flags, their crews resplendent in their finest rigs. There will be ancient boats and modern boats, rowing boats and sailing boats, steam boats and motorised boats, musical boats and boats spouting geysers. Most amazingly of all, the flotilla will be led by a floating belfry of eight bells, the largest of which, named for Queen Elizabeth, will weigh half a tonne. Its peal will be answered by the bells of churches all along the river and theirs, in turn, echoed by others up and down the land.`Yes indeed,` says David Starkey, distinguished constitutional historian, pressing the tips of his fingers together carefully. `The idea of a set of church bells on the river... I don`t think that has ever happened before. Thames river pageants have always been a mixture of the grand and the loony, and this one looks like it is going to have elements of complete lunacy. It will certainly be interesting to see what the, er, sonic effect is.` Starkey pauses and then, unable to resist, adds: `My guess is that the whole thing is just going to go straight over.``Plop!` I say quietly.`Plop?` A look of purest delight spreads across his face. `Ha ha ha! I think it will be rather more than a plop!`Starkey and I are hidden away in a back room at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, where he has guest curated an exhibition tracing the history of Thames pageantry. So far most of the advance fuss about this has centred on the fact that it will include Canaletto`s The Thames on Lord Mayor`s Day, ...
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