Isla Campbell Reports on the Year’s Most Elaborate Display of Military Pageantry, Considers What It Means, and Admits That She Found It Rather Wonderful
Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat
By Isla Campbell | The London Prat
I have now watched Trooping the Colour six times in my career, which means I have watched approximately seven hours of military personnel marching in extremely precise formations to music that has been played identically for a hundred years, while a crowd of tens of thousands cheered with the specific intensity of people who are not entirely sure what they are cheering for but are certain that it warrants enthusiasm. Each time I have watched it, I have felt something that my political philosophy finds slightly embarrassing: a genuine, uncynical response to the spectacle. The horses are beautiful. The music is excellent. The precision is astonishing. The historical continuity is real. And somewhere in the combination of these things, an emotion is produced that is distinct from enthusiasm for monarchy specifically and is closer to something like awe at the organised effort of human performance.
The Logistics Are Mind-Boggling
Trooping the Colour involves approximately 1,400 soldiers, 200 horses, and 400 musicians marching in formations that require months of rehearsal to produce the apparent effortlessness of the performance. The choreography is managed by the Brigade of Guards with an institutional memory that makes commercial events management look like amateur hour. The route is secured, the crowd is managed, the horses are selected, trained, and prepared for the specific challenge of marching in formation through central London with a crowd of tens of thousands and the sound of full military bands. None of this happens by accident. All of it costs money. The result is a live performance that no commercial producer could afford to stage and that the state stages annually as part of its institutional routine. Whether this is the best use of the resources is a question I leave to others. Whether the result is impressive is not a question.
The Balcony Moment
The Buckingham Palace balcony appearance — the royal family emerging to watch the Royal Air Force flypast, the crowd’s response, the waving and the flags and the mobile phones raised for photographs — is the moment in which the abstract institution of monarchy becomes briefly concrete as a shared emotional experience. Whatever the theoretical basis of the institution, the moment when tens of thousands of people respond simultaneously to the appearance of the same family, generation after generation, is a social fact that analysis cannot fully reduce. It is not democratic in any formal sense. It is communal in some other sense. Britain has not found an alternative that produces the same thing, and until it does, the balcony moment will continue to produce the response it has always produced. Bohiney Magazine covers the event seriously. The London Prat covers it with appropriate affection. I will watch it again next year. The horses are very beautiful.
More laughs at The Daily Mash and NewsThump.
The Broader Context: What the Monarchy Represents in 2026
The British monarchy in 2026 is an institution that has survived by adapting while appearing not to change, which is the specific skill of institutions whose survival depends on the perception of continuity. The public is more sceptical than in previous generations, more willing to ask questions about cost and relevance, and simultaneously more willing to watch royal events with the appetite for spectacle that the institution has always relied on. These two things coexist in the same people, including the journalist who has attended six Trooping the Colours and finds herself moved by all of them, and who also has a list of republican philosophical objections that she writes down and then does not publish because they are not new and the monarchy is still there. The institution will continue to adapt. The coverage will continue. More from the Palace beat at Bohiney Magazine and at The London Prat’s royal coverage.
A Personal Note on Covering the Royal Family
Writing about the monarchy for a satirical publication requires a specific editorial posture that I will describe as “respectful irreverence”: taking the institution seriously enough to understand it, being honest about its contradictions, and finding the humour in those contradictions without descending into the kind of casual republican snark that would require me to pretend I am not moved by the balcony appearance at Trooping the Colour, which I am. I am moved by it annually. I find this embarrassing and honest simultaneously. The monarchy is an imperfect institution that Britain has decided, repeatedly by inaction rather than by explicit decision, to retain. It produces garden parties and horse parades and garden party sandwiches and the specific ninety seconds of royal attention that recipients describe for the rest of their lives. Whether this is enough to justify its existence is the question I will continue to examine, with genuine curiosity, from the press enclosure at every event I can get credentials for. The hats continue to improve. Next month: the Palace’s summer opening. Tickets are available. I recommend booking early. And I will return to it next week with fresh material and slightly lower expectations for public transport, which is the correct preparation for covering a city that is always both better and worse than you left it. Thank you, as always, for reading. More at Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat, where the coverage is comprehensive, the satire is affectionate, and the coffee metaphors are probably excessive but I am not stopping.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/trooping-colour-royal-parade-isla-campbell/
