Dear Time-Reader

During the last fortnight many of you have written to us about TIME'S story of the royal wedding in London. Perhaps you would like to know something of how the assignment was covered. Certainly the members of TIME Inc.'s London bureau will never forget it.

That week, TIME Inc.'s London bureau was responsible not only for the nuptials but also for a good share of the cover story on U.S. Ambassador Lewis Douglas and a big piece of work on a forthcoming (Dec. 8) cover story about England's author-journalist Rebecca West. It also had to handle the run-of-the-news out of London and an unprecedented advance demand for TIME'S "wedding issue."

As a result, the bureau got some 23 columns of copy in the Dec. 1 issue and the circulation staff, after an unusually frustrating series of mishaps, delivered all copies close to schedule to our British subscribers. It was a busy week.

According to Bureau Chief John Osborne, the weeks preceding the wedding were "a fight to get the government to grant proper coverage facilities for our staff. After days of negotiation, facilities for TIME & LIFE reporters and photographers were much improved outside of Westminster Abbey, although we never did get more than one seat inside."

Osborne occupied it, after posting some of his staff along the wedding route at 9 in the cold, grey morning. "It was something I shall always be glad I saw," he said. "It was a most impressive and beautiful occasion." The bureau's final view of the wedding and its solemn, human, comic and historic aspects was a composite account of the correspondents' observations and experiences, two of which are typical:

One reporter took her station at King Charles's statue and withstood the buffeting of the early morning crowds until, feeling faint, she found herself being hustled off to a first aid post. Revived, she returned to her position to find it occupied by the Royal Marines' band and "henceforth I was squeezed between two burly Marines who had difficulty blowing their bugles because of my elbows." The next day she received a letter addressed to "Lady Reporter of American Magazine TIME Covering Crowd Stories in Trafalgar Square For Royal Wedding," which read, in part: "Dear Madame, I feel sure you will remember me. I am the lady from Birmingham who was wearing a black coat and red scarf. I should very much like to read what you wrote about us all.. . ."

Cynthia Ledsham, posted outside of Buckingham Palace from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., left the press stand to help a LIFE photographer and was shoved behind the police barrier. Wrote she: "I was quickly seven-deep in the crowd, packed so tightly together it was impossible to reach for my press pass. Eventually, I got it out and found myself forcibly propelled to the front where a sympathetic policeman let me wriggle through. I emerged as if I had been stripped--coat wrenched off my shoulders, my scarf off, etc. A first-aider tried to lay hands on me, but I shied away and trotted back to the press stand."

TIME'S wedding issue will also be long remembered by the London circulation department. A last minute French railway and postal workers' strike held up the shipment of Britain's copies of TIME, which are printed in Paris for distribution by issue date. Circulation chartered space on a plane, but fog closed the Paris airport. TIME'S Paris office then drove the copies by road to Calais for shipment to Dover. Because more fog had slowed the British railways to a crawl, the London office had to send a truck to Dover to receive the copies from the ship. Part of the way back to London a circulation man marched in front of the truck as pilot.

Circulation stayed up all night the day after issue date [Dec. 1] stamping and posting copies and as its Tommy Thompson let himself wearily into his house at 7 a.m. the next morning he was followed by the postman with his copy of TIME. "Nice morning," said the postman. "Your magazine's a little late this week." "Yes, a little," said Thompson, and crawled into bed.

Cordially,

James A. Linen

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.