The wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton is a mega-event that will be watched by an estimated 2 billion visitors around the globe. But not everyone is looking forward to it. As the big day approaches, millions of Britons will be fleeing abroad to escape the hype and, they hope, preserve their sanity.
“No, I’m not going to put myself through that,” says Frances, a 46-year-old sculptress who lives next to Clapham Common in south London, where the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton will be broadcast on giant video screens on April 29. A huge tent camp for 4,000 people is being erected in the park. The organizers are calling it Camp Royale.
Frances plans to leave the city and spend the weekend with a friend. “I want to get as far away as possible. I won’t switch the TV on either.”
The artist is not alone in her aversion to the royal event. When Kate and William ride along crowd-thronged streets in a horse-drawn carriage from Westminster Abbey to Buckingham Palace, many Britons won’t be watching. In a survey carried out last month by the ICM polling institute, 79 percent of respondents said they were “largely indifferent” or “couldn’t care less” about the event.