Diplomatic incident narrowly avoided when ambassador mistakes Buckingham Palace for a “real nice hotel”
By Isla Campbell | Central London correspondent. Has once shaken hands with a Beefeater.
Sources: Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat
Texas Comes to Court
Following the remarkable news that Texas has opened a London office, protocol demands that someone representing the Lone Star State eventually interact with the Firm. I have been imagining this meeting. It has kept me entertained for three days and I regret nothing.
Picture the scene. The Court of St James’s, dripping with gold leaf and the accumulated gravitas of several centuries. And across the room, a very tall man in a very large hat who just asked where the car park is. This is diplomacy. This is the special relationship in microcosm.
What Britain and Texas Have in Common
More than you might think. Both have an enormous sense of their own importance. Both are currently navigating a certain confusion about their place in the world. Both produce something the rest of the planet genuinely wants — Britain produces culture, Texas produces oil and barbecue — and both are, in their own way, convinced that this entitles them to special treatment at all times.
The Royal Family’s diplomatic function is, I would argue, Britain’s greatest soft power asset. Nobody else can send a person in a carriage to meet visiting dignitaries and have it go well. We have turned inexplicable pageantry into genuine international leverage. It is magnificent and completely deranged.
The Meeting
As Britain manages its decline, encounters like this — absurd, warm, slightly confused on both sides — are perhaps what remain when the hard power fades. What we have left is the ceremony, the hats, and a remarkable ability to make other people feel that being here, in this cold and expensive country, is somehow an honour. Long may it continue.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/texas-launches-london-office/
More monarchical chaos at The Daily Mash
