While in London in 1897, Mark Twain was commissioned by William Randolph Hearst to report for the San Francisco Examiner on the sixtieth anniversary of Queen Victoria?s ascension to the throne. Evoking historical detail reminiscent of passages in The Prince and the Pauper and Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, Twain compares the jubilee to his own original and imaginative account of the 1415 celebration following the English victory at Agincourt, and he also reflects on the rapid changes in the British Empire during the Victorian age.