Kate Green visits the team behind The Queen’s 90th-birthday celebrations at Royal Windsor Horse Show, which promises to be a spectacular and ambitious occasion.
FROM outside comes the soporific, steady clop of hooves on cobbles and,inside, show organiser Penny Henderson’s Dandie Dinmont snoozes rhythmically in his basket,yet there’s a perceptible upping of the tempo in the HPower office in the environs of Windsor Castle. Eight weeks from my visit, the company will produce the Royal Windsor Horse Show, which, each evening,features a lavish tribute to The Queen, who has never missed the show in all its 73 years.
‘I’m starting to have sleepless nights,’ admits chief executive Simon Brooks-Ward. ‘This is by far the most complex thing we’ve done. What keeps me awake is that when we did the Diamond Jubilee celebrations [in 2012], there were no expectations.With this, the tickets sold out in three hours and our website is receiving 600 hits a second. It’s Scary Mary stuff. It’s been 21.5 years in the planning and now we’re in ground rush.’
HPower’s CV includes celebrations for the Golden Jubilee and the Queen Mother’s 100th birthday and the First World War commemorations at Mons, Belgium, last year, but this is an ambitious undertaking, packing 90 years of a monarch’s life into 90 minutes with 900 horses and 1,500 people from 12 countries.
For instance, the New Zealand army band will have just 21.5 minutes to play Chariots of Fire, ‘take the mickey’ out of The King’s Troop and perform a Highland Fling, can-can and haka.
This story is from the {{IssueName}} edition of {{MagazineName}}.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the {{IssueName}} edition of {{MagazineName}}.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
Tales as old as time
By appointing writers-in-residence to landscape locations, the National Trust is hoping to spark in us a new engagement with our ancient surroundings, finds Richard Smyth
Do the active farmer test
Farming is a profession, not a lifestyle choice’ and, therefore, the Budget is unfair
Night Thoughts by Howard Hodgkin
Charlotte Mullins comments on Moght Thoughts
SOS: save our wild salmon
Jane Wheatley examines the dire situation facing the king of fish
Into the deep
Beneath the crystal-clear, alien world of water lie the great piscean survivors of the Ice Age. The Lake District is a fish-spotter's paradise, reports John Lewis-Stempel
It's alive!
Living, burping and bubbling fermented masses of flour, yeast and water that spawn countless loaves—Emma Hughes charts the rise and rise) of sourdough starters
There's orange gold in them thar fields
A kitchen staple that is easily taken for granted, the carrot is actually an incredibly tricky customer to cultivate that could reduce a grown man to tears, says Sarah Todd
True blues
I HAVE been planting English bluebells. They grow in their millions in the beechwoods that surround us—but not in our own garden. They are, however, a protected species. The law is clear and uncompromising: ‘It is illegal to dig up bluebells or their bulbs from the wild, or to trade or sell wild bluebell bulbs and seeds.’ I have, therefore, had to buy them from a respectable bulb-merchant.
Oh so hip
Stay the hand that itches to deadhead spent roses and you can enjoy their glittering fruits instead, writes John Hoyland
A best kept secret
Oft-forgotten Rutland, England's smallest county, is a 'Notswold' haven deserving of more attention, finds Nicola Venning
