We can do squeezed sphincters, as well as stiff upper lips, should the need arise.Īllison Pearson: What a remarkable mix of pageantry, religion, history, military display and nostalgia Portable lavatories locked.' Quintessentially British, then. Translated from broadcasterese, 40 per cent chance of showers meant: 'It'll bucket down.' Clare skilfully stopped us dwelling on that possibility by somehow knowing the name of every horse that would be on parade.Ī friend who had camped overnight on the Mall texted me: 'Mood wonderful. 'Only a 40 per cent chance of showers,' she boomed in that ebullient, jolly-hockey-sticks style that suits these great national occasions so well.

Not long after 8am, BBC1 commentator Clare Balding was determinedly upbeat. Would it cast a pall over the big day or could our longest-serving Prince of Wales come up smiling as the sun king? In short, would Eeyore be transformed by his people's affection into Winnie the Pooh. The sky over Buckingham Palace changed from pale pigeon to a menacing pewter. You prayed that the awfully British weather had not dampened his spirits. The dear chap had waited 70 years for his Coronation. In the past, our former Prince of Wales was known to be prone to gloom, writes Allison Pearson.

At least, please don't rain on my reign, or so Charles III must have thought this morning. Perry does a nice job with some plot twists, even if most readers will quickly discount the heir to the throne of England as a viable suspect. Though the sensitive nature of Pitt's assignment precludes any active involvement by Charlotte, his wife and partner in earlier cases, he's able to place her maid, Gracie Phipps, on the palace staff to assist him. Pitt soon eliminates the members of the sizable household staff as suspects, narrowing his focus to the prince himself and his close friends, who, it turns out, have been planning a major construction project in Africaâ€”a railway that would run from South Africa to Egypt.

In 1893, the discovery of a prostitute's mutilated corpse in a Buckingham Palace cupboard after a stag party presided over by the prince of Wales could spell political disaster for the monarchy. The detecting and diplomatic skills of Thomas Pitt, now assigned to the Special Branch, are tested as never before in bestseller Perry's solid 25th novel to feature the Victorian sleuth (after 2005's Long Spoon Lane

Buckingham palace gardens by anne perry