"It was certainly a very grand reception in the majestic ceremonial rooms at Buckingham Palace in the presence of the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh, the Princess Royal (Princess Anne), the Dukes of Gloucester and Kent, and Prince Michael of Kent,” two Michigan Law professors said in their collective reflection of a February reception that honored the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta.
Paul Brand, a William W. Cook Global Law Professor at Michigan Law and an emeritus fellow at All Souls College at the University of Oxford, and John G.H. Hudson, also a William W. Cook Global Law Professor and a professor of legal history and head of the School of History at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, were two of only three historians invited to the palace for the reception. Neither had met the queen before.
Brand talked with her briefly about why such an old document was of continuing relevance in a very different world from that in which it was originally drafted.
Hudson talked with the Princess Royal (Princess Anne) about the value to Lincoln Cathedral of their original copy of the 1215 charter.