Anniversary Address

Abstract

On two occasions during the past year our apartments here have been the scene of festive celebrations unusual in our normally unexciting routine, but none the less welcome for that. On 2 May 1974 we were privileged to entertain our Royal Fellow Queen Margrethe of Denmark who graciously agreed to accept an invitation to be formally admitted to her Fellowship in the course of her State Visit to this country. After the admission ceremony, which followed traditional lines in this room, Her Majesty attended a reception in her honour in the Library at which she was able to meet the Officers and their wives, members of Council, and many Fellows and guests, including a number who had been her teachers or contemporaries when she was studying archaeology at Cambridge some years ago. She also showed great interest in some of our treasures, such as the portrait of her ancestor King Christian II of Denmark, and in a special exhibition of material illustrating our Society's links with the Danish pioneers of European archaeology in the heroic age a century and more ago when her country led the world in the systematic study of prehistory and in the protection of ancient monuments. This exhibition, admirably contrived and displayed by our learned Librarian, showed once again what a wealth of material our collections contain on so many aspects of antiquity. The arrival and departure of the Queen were signalled by splendid fanfares from our good friends the Guild of Gentlemen Trumpeters, and we have reason to believe that Her Majesty enjoyed these outbursts of joyful noise, and indeed the whole delightfully informal occasion, every bit as much as we did ourselves.