The Company of Pikemen and Musketeers, marching alongside the Lord Mayor’s State Coach or standing guard at City events, is one of London’s most iconic images. Established just over 100 years ago, but tracing its roots back to the seventeenth century, it is a ceremonial unit of the Honourable Artillery Company (HAC) and is recruited from veterans of the HAC’s Army Reserve regiment, the oldest fighting regiment in the British Army. Granted a Royal Warrant by HM Queen Elizabeth II in 1955, the Company is tasked to provide a ceremonial bodyguard to the Lord Mayor of the City of London and provides guards for State Banquets at Guildhall, dinners at Mansion House and Livery halls and displays of seventeenth century arms drill at military and public events. This book tells the story of the Company, from the original pikemen and musketeers of the seventeenth century, to the foundation of the modern Company just after the Great War, its involvement in the pageantry of the inter-war years and the onslaught of the Blitz, its formal recognition by Royal Warrant and continuing evolution through 1950s’ austerity and 1960s’ affluence to the ‘end of history’ and beyond. Governments and demagogues come and go; monarchs pass from youth to old age. All the time the Company is there, lining the halls of Mansion House and Guildhall like living wallpaper as history passes in front of them. They also serve who only stand and wait.
