We are told, across comment pieces and social media, that we live in a newly puritanical age. Fun for fun’s sake, fun without weighty moral reasoning behind it is, supposedly, increasingly looked down upon. However, there are times when one gets a glimpse of why our last experiment with a Puritan regime was so short lived. Moments when the British let their hair down and take the business of having fun seriously. And when they do it right, when they really go for it: the British at play is a sight to behold.
This week is Royal Ascot. To some, that will mean very little; it’s just a horse race — or rather a succession of them — after all. If you don’t enjoy the odd flutter or looking at people in hats then you might well allow it to pass you by. However, to me and others, it is magnificent. And its magnificence is found in the fact that the incidentals of it — the races, the equestrianism, the pomp — though impressive in themselves, are not the sum total of Ascot. It is five days given over to the pursuit of enjoying yourself. Of course, the horses, the outfits, the gallons of Pimms and the glimpse of a royal help that along, but it is the primacy of fun, the sense of regimented misrule, that puts Ascot at the upper end of the pantheon of British social occasions.
A friend, merely on seeing the recently released cover of the race card, told me that it felt like Christmas, but with better weather. Touching faith in the British climate aside, this gives a sense of the excitement that Ascot inspires.
Would-be attendees across the nation have been getting themselves in the mood by surreptitiously trying on top hats and fascinators, squirming with anticipatory delight at the sight or smell of Pimms and rewatching that episode of The Crown where the late Queen watches horses have intercourse while Lord Mountbatten and The Mirror plan a naughty coup. Such changed behaviour in the lead up is part of the fun: as Ascot’s latest advertising campaign, currently bedecking the Tube, says: “There’s you, and then there’s Ascot you.” So, how did it end up as such a hot ticket?
It was good Queen Anne who founded the tradition of races on the site near Windsor in 1711. Of course it was; for she was the last Stuart, those great thorns in Puritanism’s side. An avid believer that the strongest protection a monarch could have was the affection of their people, Anne repaid their love by founding multiple racecourses and not taxing gin, one of her favourite drinks. As anybody who has seen the racecourse’s glass recycling bins on the morning after Ladies’ Day will know, both of her legacies are going strong today. Other monarchs left their mark. The carriage procession was instituted by that extravagantly cultured blob, George IV, who wanted to be seen, but at a distance, so as to obscure his physical decline from mocking eyes.
Perhaps Ascot’s greatest patron was the late Queen. Aides described the normally composed monarch jumping up and down with fervid excitement as one of the horses she owned was racing.
But it would be a mistake to view Ascot as a private monarchical gathering. True, there are the delineations of the enclosures, but all have the same infectious sense of atmosphere, whether it’s the Royal Enclosure or the less regulated Windsor Enclosure. They have the same issues too: the rush for the loos between races and the same difficulties in getting to the thing from London. This year the daughter of one of the nation’s wealthiest aristocrats has taken to Instagram to beg for a parking space in the course’s immediate vicinity. It’s unlikely even she will succeed in this — when it comes to equestrian related tasks, parking at Ascot makes the Augean stables look like a doddle.
Of course another way in which it unifies is that at the end of it most people end up drunk. Champagne flows, Pimms gushes, there is a veritable tsunami of beer. Even those who begin in the grander parts of the event find themselves drawn, almost gravitationally, at the end of the day to the bandstand where mass singing breaks out.
If a tuneless bellowing of Robbie Williams’s Angels isn’t a class leveller then I don’t know what is. “It’s like Glastonbury crossed with Garter Day,” one soon-to-be reveller explained to me, referencing two other stalwarts of the British fun-making season. “Except,” he later observed, “it’s cheaper than Glasto”.
Most end up drunk. If a tuneless bellowing of Robbie Williams’ Angels isn’t a class leveller then I don’t what is
At Ascot you will find peers rubbing shoulders with package handlers, the world’s greatest jockeys alongside some of the world’s worst givers of racing tips. People come from the far reaches of the globe: eager and bedecked in their fineries and knowing absolutely nothing about racing.
That’s not to say there isn’t a cohort of devotees to the Turf who still make it their business to be there. One racing fanatic I met some years ago told me he saves up every year to attend, viewing it as a holiday. This would be slightly more understandable if he didn’t live right next door to a (different) racecourse. But the point is that Ascot isn’t like any other race or any other part of the social calendar.
Herein lies the triumph of the event — and I suspect the reason that it maintains its place in the social calendar when others with their origins in the class system have not: it is a true melting pot. For all Ascot’s formality, it in fact represents a mix of people from all sorts of backgrounds, rubbing shoulders as a result of a primary unifying objective — to have fun.
Being able to find delight in absurdity — and in particular in absurdity taken seriously, is a crucial part of a healthy relationship with the rituals of life in Britain. Nowhere is this more true than the Ascot dress code.
No other institution could have necessitated a letter to a national newspaper from the Duke of Norfolk clarifying the status of hotpants. Ascot’s dress code, however, was the cause of exactly this scenario in 1971, when the nation’s premier peer was forced to make explicit that such scanty modes of dress were banned from any and all enclosures.
No other institution could have necessitated a letter from a duke, clarifying the status of hotpants
The dress code’s intricacies continue to be a crucial part of the Ascot experience. Putting on the layers of morning coat, shirt, waistcoat in what is often one of the hottest periods of the year is part of the joyous madness of it all, but it doesn’t necessarily make for comfort. Once, I remember making common cause with a pair of Liverpudlian ladies celebrating a friend’s upcoming nuptials who, towards the end of a Ladies’ Day spent in stilettos, were beginning to flag. “My feet are killing me” one told me — “at least at Aintree they give out flip-flops”.
Such seemingly unlikely run-ins — a clergyman and a hen party — are at the heart of the Ascot experience. My favourite image of such an encounter is one of the late Queen Mother meeting Frankie Dettori in 1997. The grin — like a mouth full of humbugs — she flashes at the 27-year-old Italian as he plants a firm kiss on her hand is sublime. The entire ensemble is a fusion of the formal and the mischievous; protocol followed but with a wink. A binding together of an unlikely group with the aim of enjoying themselves front and centre.
After all, Ascot is much more than just a horse race.
