Quaker and Vida's epic run
Quaker (black) and Vida (white) What's black and white and red all over? If the joke's punchline of yesteryear was 'newspapers,' then today it seems to be the very horses themselves. The alarming event unfolded in London between 8am and 9am on Wednesday 24 April 2024, and calls for interpretation. Five Household Cavalry horses (four of them are named: Trojan, Quaker, Tennyson, and Vida) broke out of their signifying chains, two of them galloping five miles following the course of the Thames. They did not reach the beach, like "Doinel" in Les Quatre Cents Coups , but they arrived at Glamis Road, which has its own claim to fame. Macbeth was the Thane of Glamis at the beginning of that apocryphal play. Its castle was the scene of Duncan's murder. Apparently frightened by something falling from height on a building site in Belgravia, the horses jumped, dumped their riders, and bolted past Buckingham Palace down The Mall, along The Strand, around The Aldwych, ...