Screenshot from BBC coverage of Trump at King Charles’ second home in Windsor.

Harry Fairground where is your faint light
now on the corner of sea or black within
that city of your going?

— Adrian Dannatt, Capacity for Loss

Most Londoners had half-forgotten about Trump’s state visit until Air Force One touched down. The capital was that distracted by the Mandelson scandal, Cabinet reshuffles, Tory defections, and brutish Tommy Robinson and his long march to what didn’t feel like freedom, the one at which Elon Musk appeared in Big Brother video-link style, warning us all over here we must fight or die. Thanks, but no thanks, Elon.

By contrast, the Trump visit had barely begun, and already the politics seemed drained from it—sucked out like venom from a snakebite.

Buckingham Palace was under renovation, so the state pageant shifted west to Windsor. Through Berkshire mist, Trump and Melania arrived at the oldest inhabited castle in the world—not just shielded from London’s anti-Trump protests, not just surrounded by a freshly erected ring of steel, but also greeted by the genteel calm of a town not exactly renowned for its Molotov cocktails. ‘Trump received the full Downton Abbey experience, with bagpipes and drums, to keep him on Britain’s side, but away from the Brits,’ noted Sam Kiley of The Independent. In Windsor, there were Grannies Against Trump but no suppression of kulaks and White Guards.

The Windsor household polished its rituals: carriage, salute, banquet. Lord Ricketts called it ‘pomp and pageantry with a purpose.’ Lord Glassman, oddly, compared Trump to Caesar—or was it Napoleon? The point seemed to be that monarchs and emperors knew how to host each other, even when they didn’t want to. Charles was earning his coins—the ones with his head stamped on them.

Around the spectacle buzzed a ragged chorus. London mayor Sadiq Khan denounced the 47th president as an encourager of intolerance: ‘Silence is........

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