It’s Festival 22 time! Welcome to an orgy of pride, pageantry and, er, levelling up | Catherine Bennett

It’s Festival 22 time! Welcome to an orgy of pride, pageantry and, er, levelling up | Catherine Bennett: Next year will see us celebrate all that makes Britain great – according to Boris Johnson

Usefully, as it turns out, there is already a word for a national glut of festivals and pageants – pageantitis. First innocently observed in 1907, then again in the 1950s, another wave of festivities is currently being commissioned – to the satisfaction of its self-appointed star, Boris Johnson – for 2022.

Last week, with a hint of the impending auto-idolatry, the prime minister took early ownership of one of these celebrations, the Birmingham Commonwealth Games, which the Queen had just launched with a baton relay. They marked, he announced, “a year of pride and celebration for this country”.

Continue reading…

from The Guardian https://ift.tt/3aqDo6C
from Tumblr https://ift.tt/3oOkFdm