The London Press Club held a special summer garden party this week in College Gardens, within the grounds of Westminster Abbey. The garden, said to be the oldest cultivated in England, dates back some nine hundred years to when it served as the monks’ kitchen and physic garden.
The party marked one hundred years since the birth of Her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Joint Deputy Chairmen Robert Jobson and Ray Massey hosted alongside Chairman Doug Wills, who thanked both for their work in putting the day together.
The club’s longstanding sponsors, St James’s House, supported the event. Richard Freed, who heads the 25-year-old publishing company, and his colleague Ludovica oversaw the arrangements. The firm also sponsors the club’s annual Awards each autumn at Stationers’ Hall.
Classical singer Beatrice Alexander performed “Praise, My Soul, the King of Heaven,” the hymn sung at the Queen’s wedding in 1947 and again at her State Funeral in 2022. She later led the marquee in “Jerusalem.”
Dickie Arbiter, the Queen’s former press secretary, and Ailsa Anderson, who held the role of Press Secretary to the Queen, were among those introduced during the afternoon. Biographer Robert Hardman spoke about his new book on Elizabeth II and the soft power diplomacy of the monarchy, reflecting on his meetings with US President Donald Trump in Washington and at Mar-a-Lago while writing it.
The gathering drew many familiar Fleet Street names: Paul Henderson, former Daily Mirror and Mail executive, Shekhar Bhatia, of the old Evening Standard and Mail Online; Sky’s Martin Brunt; John Twomey of the Daily Express; Daily Mail writers Stephen Wright and Richard Kay; Rebecca English also attended along Sun and Daily Mirror and Times royal editors Matt Wilkinson, Russell Myers and Kate Mansey; and Stuart Higgins, former editor of The Sun.
A toast was raised to His Majesty The King and to the late Queen Elizabeth II, in whose honour the company had gathered, in the shadow of the Abbey where the Queen was married, crowned and mourned at her state funeral.
