The Warwick Pageant

It's one of those pageants from history, in which Roman centurions fight caveman with halberds, Queen Elizabeth arrives in a carriage, and another queen gets her head chopped off while maidens in long, white gowns and crowns of daisies dance o'er the greensward. It looks, in short, like a Society for Creative Anachronism event, with someone footing the bill so all the Tower Warders' uniforms look the same.

It seems to have been paid for by the Earl of Warwick, and arranged and shot under the supervision of Louis Napoleon Parker. He was a musician, playwright and staged three of these pageants in the1900s. Everyone seems to be having a good time.

Parker's parents were Americans traveling in Europe when he was born in 1852. It was thought he would not survive, so a French woman in the neighborhood gave him his very French name. The predictions were correct. He died in 1944, aged 91.