Aware for years of my fascination with the Last Art Show, as well as its time and place, my mother was all flushed when she reported to me that she had read in L’Espresso that there was to be a big celebration of several birthdays in the royal family at the very same time—the night of June 21, 2000. In addition to the eighteenth birthday of Prince William, the Queen will be celebrating the hundredth birthday of her mother, seventieth of her sister Margaret, fiftieth of her daughter Anne, and fortieth of her son Andrew, all of which fall within a few months of each other. All kinds of celebrities have been invited, including Clinton, Mandela, and even Putin. Only at the end of this report I learned that the event would take place at the Windsor Castle, rather than the Buckingham Palace, a stone’s throw from Hyde Park, where artists had been invited to burn their own works at the Last Art Show. Innocent of the intricacies of royal geography, my mother thought the Castle and the Palace were both near the Park. The last bit of information was somewhat disappointing, I must admit, for my mother’s enthusiasm about the coincidences linking the two events was ever-so-slightly contagious.