Welcome to British Isles Friday! British Isles Friday is a weekly event for sharing all things British and Irish — reviews, photos, opinions, trip reports, guides, links, resources, personal stories, interviews, and research posts. Join us each Friday to link your British and Irish themed content and to see what others have to share. The link list is at the bottom of this post. Pour a cup of tea or lift a pint and join our link party!

Last week, I celebrated wedding season by watching a realistic re-enactment of the wedding between Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.

Heather enjoyed the audio version of An Inheritance of Magic by Benedict Jacka, set in a version of London where the rich and powerful are also magical.

Marg participated in two blog tours for books set in the British Isles. Come Fly with Me by Helen Rolfe features a heroine who flies a helicopter as an air ambulance in rural England. A New Dawn at Owl’s Lodge by Jessica Redland features an injured owl and two people who love gymnastics but weren’t as successful as they expected.

Tina reviewed The Will by Rebecca Reid about what happens when a dysfunctional family gathers to learn who will inherit Roxborough Hall in Norfolk.

My fellow Americans may have missed, as I did, the announcement a week and a half ago that the UK will have an election this summer. Elections in the UK are very different from in the US. We have always known, for example, that there would be a big election in November 2024, with ballots for the President, the entire House of Representatives, and about a third of the Senate. This happens every four years in the US.

The UK has a bit more leeway about when elections happen, with the Prime Minister choosing the date. A newer law forces an election to happen every five years, if it hasn’t happened already. That date was January 28, 2025. So, it was expected that the current Prime Minister, Rushi Sunak, would pick a date some time in 2024. But his announcement on May 22 seems to have taken a lot of people, including his own party members, by surprise.

TLDR News produced two videos in two days to cover the announcement, the possible reasons, and the immediate reactions.

Another huge difference between US and UK elections is that our campaign season is interminable. Theirs lasts a few weeks. Our British friends will go to the polls on the day that we celebrate independence from Britain with hot dogs and fireworks — July 4, 2024.