This article is taken from the August-September 2024 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.

Long before John Major and David Mellor appeared at Stamford Bridge wearing matching scarves and when most football fans thought “Nessun Dorma” was a Japanese SUV, there was another sport that brought the country together in a convulsion of delirious democracy: horse racing.

The gee-gees has always been the sport of kings and of dustmen. Go to any meeting, and you will find toffs, tinkers and everyone in between rubbing shoulders. Most have a flutter (with marginally less corruption than your average general election), and there is every chance the richest will leave poorer whilst the poorest pick their way home with pockets packed. Racing, especially down in the bookies’ ring, is remorselessly egalitarian.

That is not to say that racegoers do not have their own places and spaces. The great and good gravitate towards the grandstand whilst the real people populate the rails. Everyone does their best, though, dressing up to the nines, and sometimes well into double figures, whatever their actual figures may demand.

People forget their troubles and let themselves go in an atmosphere that is lively, lager-filled and fun

This custom is never more clear than at the one meeting where, quite literally, the kingdom comes together. Royal Ascot week, the highpoint of the summer social calendar, takes place around the middle of June. The King attends along with a wide variety of his subjects. The Silver Ring boasts the best of British, the “millions like us” who uncomplainingly get on with life, paying their taxes and propping up the country whilst the political establishment fights for the right to waste their money and meddle in their affairs. For a happy afternoon, the people forget their troubles and let themselves go in an atmosphere that is lively, lager-filled and fun.

Up in the Royal Enclosure, where the people’s representatives can be found, the atmosphere is only a little less restrained. In recent years the lovely expanses of verdant greensward have given way to garden furniture and astroturf. The outdoor space allocated to various London clubs-on-tour has also grown, which is a pity as the feeling it provokes is one of clutter where once there was open vista.

Certainly, the view towards the course itself is now inhibited by the Trianon champagne marquee, which rises from its elevated esplanade like the Great Pyramid at Giza. Opposite, the Wyndham restaurant caters for those non-club members who wish to pretend for a day.

The Royal meeting’s organisers do try harder now to enforce the dress code; in 2022 one of my friends was turned away at the gate, not because he was hatless or wearing an egregiously ill-fitting Moss Bros coat (there are plenty of them) but because he had dared to wear red socks — a minor idiosyncrasy that warranted disfavour even though haute couture eccentricity is usually smiled upon.

In June I spotted a young swain of vaguely Oriental countenance swanning around in imperial collar, powder blue kid gloves, spats, silver-topped cane and a pair of gold-rimmed pince-nez. The whole ensemble, together with genteel gait, seemed a marriage between Algernon Moncrieff and that wing-collared emissary of the Japanese Emperor who signed the surrender aboard the USS Missouri. He certainly appeared to know he was “on deck”. Yet no one turned a head. At Ascot he was mise-en-scène.

Each race-day ends with a sing-song at the bandstand, where once again Burton’s finest tailoring mixes happily with Brigg’s best umbrellas, all washed up on an ocean of Chapel Down sparkling wine — for there is a Chapel Down bar next to the paddock. Everyone tries to keep in tune to the anthems of Jack Judge, The Beatles and Vera Lynn.

His Majesty’s Representative has now dropped “Rule Britannia” from the repertoire, though “Land of Hope and Glory” remains, demonstrating yet further the eccentricities, inconsistencies and hypocrisy of our noble Establishment caste (“wider still and wider, shall thy angst be set”).

Yet, the National Anthem still ends the afternoon, sending our Happy Breed away back to our homes, some singing, many swaying, but all in the knowledge that everyone has had a deluxe day at the races.