9 July 2025

Henley Regatta’s parade of manners

Is this the last place in Britain that still thinks Lord Salisbury is prime minister?

I never thought I would curse myself for not owning a straw boater. What use does someone like me – a fierce devotee to the metropole, allergic to trace amounts of kitsch, irredeemably Irish – have for a hat like that? On Friday I found out: I was off to Henley Regatta and in search of something to wear. I wanted it to say “the Home Counties are my sunlit uplands, I am a shire Tory”. If only for the hat!

With its taste-adjacent mock-Tudor, primary-school bunting, wood-panelled motor boats, glittering stretch of river and ambient waterfowl, Henley-on-Thames might have claim to be Britain’s nicest town – if you are into that sort of thing. It is at least technically close to truth: its parliamentary constituency is in the top ten least deprived in all of the United Kingdom.

And unlike Holland Park, or Bath, or Oddington – where these people might otherwise live – it is quiet. Mary Berry lives here. I don’t know where Cath Kidston lives but I can tell you that she would like it too. The Notable Businesses section of Henley’s Wikipedia entry is rather short. In fact, I will report it to you in full: “Organic baby food manufacturer Ella’s Kitchen is headquartered in Henley-on-Thames.” [Ends.]

A mid-pandemic trip to Eastbourne, a rundown seaside resort on the south coast, made me wonder whether anyone had told the residents there that the War was over. On the banks of the river in Henley with boats full of Krug and ruddy-faced men drifting past, it is almost as if the 20th century had never even happened. Henley exists in an eternal sun-dappled afternoon in 1899. Suffering is relative, but I suspect not much of it goes on here.

Take all of that and dial it up to 11 and you have Henley during the annual six-day Royal Regatta – the world’s most prestigious rowing event, so I’m told. And a highlight of England’s social calendar, so I worked out myself. “If you go to Ascot, you go to Henley,” some polite 19-year-olds (recent graduates of Bedford School) explained to me as they shared a pitcher of Pimms at the Catherine Wheel – or, in other words, the world’s poshest Spoons.

The banks of the river are thronged with men in striped rowing blazers (each colourway a secret code for the school they would have been caned at 50 years ago) and women in floral dresses (one mistakenly wore a fascinator, singling herself out as a conspicuous arriviste – tut tut!). As I snaked my way through the crowd – primitively, still longing for the boater – I heard of two separate men called Orlando, I saw one straw-hatted broadsheet columnist, and I drowned in a sound bath of RP. It was diverse of age, if nothing else: the blazers a uniting force between young and aged, all Old Boys at the end of the day.

This Oxfordshire town was once the seat of Michael Heseltine and Boris Johnson – but now, for the first time since 1910, the Tories no longer reign over their leafy riverine heartland. The Liberal Democrats stormed through David Cameron’s England last year and even the residents of Henley – the only place in Britain that still thinks Lord Salisbury is prime minister – were convinced by the pitch.

I wonder if the contemporary Tories put down the migrant crime statistics and swapped them for a pair of deck shoes, their friends in Henley may come back to their side. I suspect, in the very least, the two Orlandos would.

I tried on a boater: charming! I think. I understand these people… I say, imbued with confidence afforded by a straw hat – these are the good-time radicals, the uncool elites, the posh people cosplaying as even posher people. Easy. And then a boat passes with some small children, a young blonde woman and a man in a stetson. Flapping from the stern, in the light and wealthy Henley breeze, was a Confederate flag. “It’s just bad manners,” someone from the bank harrumphs. Is it just bad manners? So I thought: time to go. Back to London. I don’t get this at all. You do NOT need the hat, Finn.