REVIEW
PLATINUM JUBILEE PAGEANT THE MENAGERIE ON THE MALL WORDS | STEPHEN SPARK
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here was a purple snake, elephants in varied hues, giraffes, flocks of swans, horses real and imagined, a pack of disobedient corgis, lions, ravenous pigs, a bull, a fish, ravens, flamingos and a large but graceful dragon. On 5 June 2022, the Mall, the UK’s only purpose-designed ceremonial road, which runs straight as a ruler from Trafalgar Square to Buckingham Palace, hosted a menagerie fit for a Queen to celebrate her 70 years on the throne. 12 SN JUNE 2022
If you’d lined the railings alongside St James’s Park (or, like an estimated one billion people around the world, watched it on TV), you might also have glimpsed banners, flags, umbrellas, roller-skaters, sousaphone players, Brazilian baterias, steelpan players, dholak drummers, Daleks, JCB diggers, Bollywood dancers, trampolinists, PacMan, a wedding cake, drag queens, hippies, a motorised orange… and plenty more. Commentators made much of the event’s “eccentricity”, but in truth this was a demonstra-
