The Mall, the famous road ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶q̶u̶e̶e̶n̶ sorry the King drives down in his carriage, is a creation of the modern era designed to make you love the monarchy. That's basically the whole video in a sentence. This is the story of that road, why it's there and what it's come to represent.
TIP ME A CHRISTMAS TREAT: ko-fi.com/ExploringLondon
Twitter (don't tweet a lot of history content tbh): @AndrewJD
As usual here's some caveats.
The game of Pall Mall or whatever you want to call it has different descriptors, you definitely used a mallet and a ball and a hoop but the hoop being on the ground, near the ground, or in the air is up for debate. I think it was very croquet oriented which is how I've chosen to describe it.
Clearly the idea of complaining that something being not as old as other things makes it invalid is silly, and there's also a good argument that most royal creations to some degree are designed to prop up the monarchy so I shouldn't be shouting about this one. But this is very new and I think secretly so, hence my weakly held stance. On the same lines a landmark clearly can't be fake, it's a landmark because it is one, that is just me being provocative.
I've been deliberately vague on some dates to make the story flow better, I would accept the point that a lot of the things that made London grand in the 19th century happened over a long period and for different reasons.
Filming this in winter was a terrible idea because all the flags and flowers are gone, just imagine them.
My skin looks awful, another reason I should never have done this in winter.
The end of the video is absolutely supposed to be a commentary on the shaky ground the royal family stand on.