Among the throngs around the world celebrating the Diamond Jubilee yesterday, there should have been a few dozen Englishmen and women raising their glasses to the Queen in the rolling countryside outside Harare.
It was not to be, however. President Mugabe’s police told the Zimbabwean branch of the Royal Society of St George that their celebratory picnic on a farm was banned under the Public Order and Security Act.
The society was founded in 1894 “with the noble object of promoting Englishness”.
“It’s a sad day,” said Brian Heathcote, the president. It describes itself as “the standard bearer of traditional English values at home and abroad”.
In Kenya, Nairobi government officials were due to light a beacon at Treetops today, the safari lodge where the Queen first learnt of her father’s death. The beacon is one of 4,000 to be lit across the Commonwealth.
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Many of the million Britons who live in Spain celebrated the Jubilee with street parties across the costas.
In Australia commemorative stamps and coins have been issued and Julia Gillard, the Prime Minister, will light a beacon at Parliament House today.
Unlikely celebrations in the United States included a sword-fighting demonstration in St Louis. The British vice-consul was putting on a more respectable event at the Old State House in Boston, where guests were treated to British carols and a Shakespeare reading.
In Canada, celebrations centred on a town called London, on the banks of the River Thames in Ontario. Military musicians put on a concert alongside an 8ft Jubilee cake, slices of which were given to guests.