On Friday, Chester flowed with ice cream. Hugh Grosvenor, the 7th Duke of Westminster , married Olivia Henson in the city where he has his own hotel. People waved cocktail flags.
Newspapers sent photographers. Fashion writers described the dress. It was quasi-feudal: the duke bought ice cream for everyone in Chester and decorated the city with 100,000 flowers.
(Of course, I wondered if he got a discount and thought – probably, yes.) Grosvenor is the 14th richest man in Britain, with a fortune of £10bn, and he is richer than the King. He owns 300 acres in Mayfair and Belgravia.
In 1224, it would have been a pig not an ice cream, but a pig is less photogenic, and the aristocracy like to appear benevolent. They aren’t – they hold power tightly, they are the most enduring elite on earth – but they are good at marketing. The wedding was marketing.
Britain is still culturally in thrall to this class, and this partly explains the long Tory hegemony. The “apolitical” Royal Family are not Conservative, but they embody conservatism. They sit at the apex of the aristocracy, even if the King limited their tickets to the Coronation and invited Ant and Dec instead.
If this seemed self-serving (there is limited room at the top, optics matter) the aristocracy, of all people, understand. Perhaps Tsar Nicholas II understood when his cousin George V refused him sanctuary from the Bolsheviks, for fear it would diminish his own power. These are ruthless people.
Despite, or rather bec.