It was a brilliant stroke to think of a River Pageant, because it stirs the collective memory. When we bother to ask how our nation came into being, we find that much of the answer is writ in water.
Coming up the Thames, as Harry Mount reminds us in his charming new book, How England Made the English, the Romans found two gravel-topped hills above the river and its marshes, and settled them. Ever since, those hills have dominated the City of London. St Paul’s Cathedral, which yesterday surveyed the River Pageant as it passed, stands on the site of the Roman Temple of Venus.
Much later, royal castles and palaces – Windsor, Hampton Court, Westminster and Whitehall – were built on the banks of the river. At the end of the 18th century, the first great enclosed docks were constructed. Water was our national, and international, element. The Thames “was one of the principal arteries of England”, says Mount, “carrying stone, grain and timber in vast quantities”. The principal impression of foreigners approaching London by water was of the incredible volume of traffic. 
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