Yesterday was the first King’s Birthday Parade since Thursday 6th June 1951.
Then Princess Elizabeth took the salute (the King was unwell) in full dress uniform riding Winston – this sounds like a game of Consequences – but Winston was a chestnut gelding with white left hooves. (It was not until 1959 that Trooping the Colour took place on Saturdays.) Winston had been born in Yorkshire in 1937 and was sold to the Metropolitan Police Service (as it then was) in 1944. Although he was named after Winston Churchill, all the horses acquired by the Met in 1944 were given names beginning with W. To digress, you may remember this extract from The Secret Sin of Septimus Brope by Saki.
“Is your maid called Florence?”
“Her name is Florinda.”
“What an extraordinary name to give a maid!”
“I did not give it to her; she arrived in my service already christened.”
“What I mean is,” said Mrs. Riversedge, “that when I get maids with unsuitable names I call them Jane; they soon get used to it.”
“An excellent plan,” said the aunt of Clovis coldly; “unfortunately I have got used to being called Jane myself. It happens to be my name.”
The club servants at Pratt’s are called George or Georgina after founder, George Pratt. My grandfather always gave the black Labrador bitches at Barmeath names beginning with B: Bounce, Bess, Bell, Beatle etc.
Yesterday the King rode Noble, bred by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the 1st Battalion Welsh Guards trooped their Colour. It was the first time the monarch had taken the salute on horseback since the Queen’s last time riding on parade in 1986.
The Colour of the 3rd Battalion Grenadier Guards was trooped in 1951.
“During the First World War, the Grenadier Guards was expanded from three battalions to five, of which four served on the Western Front, while later during the Second World War, six battalions were raised, and several were converted to an armoured role as part of the Guards Armoured Division. These units fought in France, North-West Europe, North Africa and Italy. After the Second World War the regiment was reduced first to three battalions, then to two, and finally to one battalion in the mid-1990s.” (Wikipedia)
Captain Dagger sounds like a dangerous sort of bounder.
But Major RC Carr-Gomm No. 6 Guard 1st Bn. Coldstream Guards was a very decent cove: he went on to become one of my Latin masters. As far as I remember he, and his brother, were very much involved with the Quakers.