The magnificence of the royal wedding captured the nation's imagination and brought thousands on to the streets to cheer. Its Norman Hartnell dresses and 400lb wedding cake (extravagances frowned on in some quarters) offered a temporary escape from a ration-book economy and the worries of an unstable world. Using the unparalleled original material in the National Archives, Elizabeth and Philip charts the round-the-clock efforts of those - high and low - who ensured the event's success.Fascinating nuggets and individual anecdotes abound, from the official who proposed using fireworks (given all the 'surplus explosive chemicals' left over from the war!) to civil servants appalled at the poor-quality tourist tat, or the police who - politely but firmly - demanded their own beer tent to keep up morale on the day. There was royal protocol to consider too - how would the Foreign Office deal with congratulations from Japan, with which Britain was still technically at war, or from Albania's former king, now persona non grata in his homeland? And would it be necessary to protect all that pageantry and glamour from that most British of problems, rain?