This is the weekend for the Diamond Jubilee celebrating Queen Elizabeth II’s 60 years on the throne. These things don’t happen often. There was a Diamond Jubilee for Queen Victoria in 1897, when she was still short of 80, but none, so far as I know, for King George III in 1820, since he had been declared insane in 1811 and the functions of the throne were assigned to the Prince Regent who, after his father’s death that year, became King George IV.
The most royalist of Britain’s broadsheets, the Daily and Sunday Telegraph, have been providing lavish coverage of the Jubilee. Here is their homepage, their lead story on the Jubilee, and a portfolio of pictures of the celebrations and street parties. Readers of my book Our First Revolution: The Remarkable British Upheaval That Inspired America’s Founding Fathers (now on Kindle!) may remember that when William, Prince of Orange, landed in southwest England with 25,000 troops to contest the governance of his uncle and father-in-law, King James II, bonfires were lit all along the coast to tell others of the event. Bonfires or beacons were the most rapid communications media of the late seventeenth century. Bonfires will be lit on Monday night for the Diamond Jubilee and, for readers who happen to be in Britain, Northern Ireland, the Shetland Islands and the Channel Islands, here is the Telegraph’s convenient map of the locations of the beacons. If I’m reading the map right, there will be 2,810 of them. My understanding is that the Channel Islands are not part of the United Kingdom, but are ruled by the Queen in her capacity as Duke of Normandy.
