Eight Burning Questions About the Fight to Ban British Guard Hats
An extremely important deep dive into one of the world’s most pressing problems: the big, fuzzy hats at Buckingham PalaceEight Burning Questions About the Fight to Ban British Guard Hats
An extremely important deep dive into one of the world’s most pressing problems: the big, fuzzy hats at Buckingham Palace
There’s no way to sugarcoat this, so I’ll just come right out and say it: They’re trying to ban British guard hats. This kind: 💂. Eighteen members of Parliament wrote a letter last week urging the government to adopt an alternative. Their reason? It turns out that the hats, which are known as “bearskins” in British military terminology, are made out of the skins of bears. “Bears,” the MPs wrote, “are still being shot with crossbows”—what???—“and killed, their cubs orphaned, and their pelts used to produce new caps.” OK, that does sound bad. “Both Parliament and the British public have consistently rejected the cruelty associated with the fur trade,” the MPs said. The time has come, they concluded, to start making the hats from fake fur, thereby ending the cycle of animal exploitation and giving contemporary British values a new life, in hat form.
That’s right: We can no longer have towering, absurdly hirsute, functionally deranged drainpipes made from bears murdered with medieval weaponry on the heads of our rigidly immobile palace guards, because of Woke.
It must be acknowledged that the MPs make some valid points. Faux fur looks pretty much identical to real fur, but you don’t have to orphan any polyester cubs to acquire it. (Polyester is incapable of sexual reproduction.) Why not use the less cruel but equally fuzzy option when you can? But the movement to ban bearskin hats isn't without its flaws. For instance, while the MPs sent their letter to the reassuringly British-sounding Office of the Minister of State for Defence Readiness and Industry, the minister in charge of that office is named “Luke Pollard.” Excuse me? “Luke Pollard” is not the name of a British government official. “Luke Pollard” is the guitarist and secondary songwriter for a Midwest emo band called the Mood Ring Continuum. “Luke Pollard” released his first solo album, Death and Eastern Ohio, in 2013, after the end of his short-lived relationship with Anna Kendrick. It got a 5.1 on Pitchfork. This is not who you turn to when you’re trying to reform military headgear morality. The MPs should have found someone called Alistair Gideon-Cornwick and mailed the letter to him.
In any case, whenever we’re dealing with a controversial issue—AI, violence in the Middle East, whether a giant hat should be made out of long-ply synthetic fiber—laying out the pros and the cons in a rational manner can help us clarify our thoughts. Therefore, I now present you with Eight Burning Questions About the Fight to Ban British Guard Hats. After each answer, we will turn for additional commentary to members of the two groups most directly affected by the situation: one of His Majesty’s palace guardsmen currently serving in the British Army’s Household Division, and a bear.
1. When we talk about “British palace guards,” we’re referring to the dudes in red coats who famously stand stock-still and ignore the tourists trying to provoke them?
Those dudes, yes. They’re called the King’s Guard. Here’s their band playing “9 to 5” in a deeply strange and lovely tribute to Dolly Parton.
Here’s one demonstrating the whole “ignoring the tourists” thing.
Here they are demonstrating that they can be kind to bears on occasion.
The King’s Guard isn’t a single body of soldiers; rather, different regiments take turns guarding the London palaces—Buckingham and St. James’s—for set periods of time. Based on their uniforms, you’d assume they’re protecting the royal family from a gang of pickpockets last seen in the year 1879. However, they are responsible for performing actual—not just ceremonial—guarding duties.
A bear says …
Ah, the pageantry of London. How I love visiting that historic and magical city. Whenever life affords me the chance to travel to Old Albion, I never miss the opportunity to witness the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. Truly one of the finest spectacles in the world! Monarchy! There is nothing like it for transmuting routine into theater. Do let me venture to add, however, that as fond as I am of the guardsmen in their scarlet-hued coats and gleaming black boots, I find myself rather less than enthusiastic about the prospect of becoming one of their hats. Generally speaking, I would rather be a bear than a hat.
Lance Corporal Philip Norton Thorpe-Norton, sentry, Buckingham Palace, says …
[Standing stock-still, not reacting to the question]
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2. Wait, how can they perform “actual guarding duties” if they’re not allowed to move or respond to anything?
Great question. The thing is that despite the sitcom trope of stony-faced guardsmen who never do stuff like bump annoying tourists while screaming “MAKE WAY FOR THE KING’S GUARD,” they are in fact allowed to take swift and decisive action against anyone who impedes their work. Specifically, they are allowed to bump the shit out of annoying tourists and absolutely bellow, “MAKE WAY FOR THE KING’S GUARD.” You sow the wind of messing with the wrong King’s Guardsman, you’re reaping the whirlwind of a bumping and bellowing the likes of which you’ve never experienced. There’s an entire YouTube universe of videos starring idiots who thought it would be funny to provoke a sentry, then got bump-bellowed so hard, their lives were never the same again.
A bear says …
Of course, one does quite recognize that guardsmen deserve to have their personal space respected, just as the rest of us do. Might I gently suggest that the same principle ought to apply even beyond the precincts of the palace? For instance, one way to respect someone’s personal space is not to kill them and turn them into a hat.
Lance Corporal Philip Norton Thorpe-Norton, sentry, Buckingham Palace, says …
[Continuing to stand utterly still as if not having heard the question, although I repeated it loudly three times while standing 6 inches from his face]
3. Why do they wear those hats? Aren’t they uncomfortable?
Bearskin hats have a long history in European military wear. Grenadier regiments started wearing them in the 17th and 18th centuries; in England, the Clothing Warrant of 1768 caused companies to swap out their cloth miters—another, more vegan sort of tall cap—for the ursine variety. According to the BBC, the hats were chosen “to make the soldiers look more intimidating in battle,” which makes sense, because nothing is more intimidating than catastrophically top-heavy, overheating soldiers rendered totally blind by their own headwear. Picture the terror on the faces of the Empire’s foes as a line of 9-foot-tall gladiators comes staggering out of the artillery smoke, wildly flinging their arms about as they try to determine which way to go, their brains cooking to the consistency of a poached egg, their chinstraps barely clearing their lower lips for some reason. People don’t realize this, but when Tennyson wrote that the Light Brigade charged “Into the jaws of Death, / Into the mouth of hell,” he was talking about the lads getting dressed.
A bear says …
Yes, the hats do look rather uncomfortable to wear, don’t they? Alas, poor guardsmen! Wearing the skin taken from our corpses must be terribly inconvenient for them. Look at all these poor, suffering chaps.
Of course, in a photo like this, you see row upon row of brightly attired soldiers. I see Edgar … and Wilton … and Joanna … and Edith. So many friends with whom I shall never again share a cup of Darjeeling or a game of backgammon. Perhaps a well-chosen micromodal textile would offer superior wicking properties.
Lance Corporal Philip Norton Thorpe-Norton, sentry, Buckingham Palace, says …
[Staring furiously ahead, jaw slightly flexed, as a single bead of sweat trickles from his temple down to his earlobe]
4. So wait, where do the bearskins come from? Are there bears in the U.K.?
There are not, at least not outside zoos. Brown bears once roamed the British Isles (read that in a David Attenborough voice), but they went extinct in England around 1,500 years ago, and in Scotland a few centuries after that. Now the U.K. only has Beatrix Potter animals. Unfortunately, hedgehogs, stoats, voles, and dormice are all far too cute to be harvested for military helmets. The bearskins used to make the guards’ hats are imported from Canada.
A bear says …
Have we looked into hedgehog-skin hats, though? I mean, really looked into them? The insulating properties, the structural rigidity of the spines? It could be quite … no. No. This is your weakness talking, Terence. I cannot countenance the hattification of another creature merely to spare my own kind. We must work toward a world where no one becomes a hat save those who wish to become one.
Lance Corporal Philip Norton Thorpe-Norton, sentry, Buckingham Palace, says …
[No reaction]
5. Did you say above that they’re killing bears with crossbows? Are crossbows still a thing in 2026??
High-powered crossbows, yes. This is apparently a common way to hunt? I had no idea. I’m not a hunter myself. As PETA has noted for years, bears are often lured to a spot with buckets of sweet bait and then shot; they have to be shot several times, and they regularly escape to die slowly and painfully from their injuries. This sort of hunting is illegal in the U.K., which makes its use in costuming the guardians of the liege of the realm seem even more questionable. Honestly, what is wrong with people? Reading about this sort of hunting makes me feel like the world is full of sadists. I need to do something to console myself. Time to go out for my ninth cheeseburger of the week.
A bear says …
I think of Pooh with his pot of honey. I think of Paddington with his jar of marmalade. The British have done more than any other people to popularize the image of the bear as a lover of and rejoicer in sweet, sticky treats. Are we then to countenance the use of those treats in the wanton slaughter of that same beloved animal? Would you summon Paddington with a strategically situated jam jar and then, when he came to investigate, riddle him with crossbow quills, or bolts, or whatever they may be called? (I read medieval literature at Oxford, but have made no extensive study of the métier and terminology of war.) Fie! Fie, I say!
Lance Corporal Philip Norton Thorpe-Norton, sentry, Buckingham Palace, says …
[Continuing to remain aloof from the debate]
6. If the way bears are hunted for the hats is so cruel, why are people only just now trying to do something about it?
They’re not; they’ve been trying for years. The movement has fresh momentum because of the MPs’ letter, but it’s not at all new. Back in 2006, for instance, 70 animal welfare activists staged a naked protest against the guards’ hats near St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. The same year, at least 180 British lawmakers signed a motion urging the government to find a cruelty-free alternative to bearskin. “Black bears, who are intelligent and curious animals, are slaughtered in Canada so that their skins may be used for ceremonial hats,” the Conservative MP Ann Widdecombe wrote in a letter to her colleagues the same year. You can tell a lot of time has passed since 2006 because when I first saw “conservative,” “intelligent and curious animals,” and “being slaughtered” in the same sentence, my brain assumed Widdecombe approved of the killing. Kristi Noem would be insisting that we ramp up our hat procurement to increase the rate of the slaughter. Donald Trump would be promising a massive bearskin hat for every man, woman, and child in America. (It would not surprise me if he actually did this at some point.)
A bear says …
Dr. King said that the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice. The first part of the epigram is undeniably true; one hopes the second may not be wishful thinking. Just last week, as I was smoking my pipe after a postprandial stroll through the back garden, I caught myself wondering—in a lamentably selfish way, I confess—whether the moral arc of the universe bent toward justice more or less quickly than it bent toward my becoming a chapeau. I turned to my Shakespeare and a snifter of cognac for comfort, but alas, comfort was slow to arrive.
Lance Corporal Philip Norton Thorpe-Norton, sentry, Buckingham Palace, says …
[Suddenly stamps one foot very hard, turns sharply, marches 10 feet in one direction, turns sharply, marches back, and jiggles rifle before relapsing into stationary silence]
7. But if people have wanted to find a synthetic alternative to the hats for years, why hasn’t the government done it?
Apparently it’s harder than you’d think to find a material that maintains the human head at a steady temperature of 480 degrees Fahrenheit while also largely eliminating the wearer’s ability to see. Luke Pollard, the defense minister to whom the MPs sent their recent letter, has said he’s in favor of replacing the hats; the government just hasn’t found the right alternate material yet. Back in 2006, ESPN, of all places, reported that officials had “tested a false fur that was hot and tended to matte in rainy weather” (sic), adding creepily that “durable and rich bearskin is preferred.”
A bear says …
Durable and rich bearskin. Yes, I see. Well, certainly, the government must take all the time it needs to find an alternative. One cannot rush these things! And by all means, in the interim, feel free to kill me. We both agree that it is wrong, but as G.K. Chesterton said to the little girl after pilfering her chocolate, one must survive the hour before dinner somehow. Oh, I apologize for this paragraph. I never become sarcastic or allude to Chesterton except in extremis. This debate has been rather dispiriting, I’m afraid. I came here expecting a vigorous intellectual exchange, and instead I find myself in a three-way colloquy with a tap-dancing buffoon and a deaf-mute.
Lance Corporal Philip Norton Thorpe-Norton, sentry, Buckingham Palace, says …
[A glassy blank, as silent as the abyss]
8. Isn’t the whole premise of this article kind of sensationalist? If we’re just looking at changing the material, we’re not really talking about banning the hats so much as tweaking them, right? Aren’t there bigger problems in the world we should be talking about?
There are much bigger problems in the world, which is why there’s a weird sort of escapist relief in focusing on a relatively minor controversy that’s been unchanged for decades. People will keep caring about the small stuff even as the world is going up in flames. The zombie hordes will be pouring down Fifth Avenue, and somebody will still stop to turn an upside-down beetle over. That’s nice!
And in a moment when so much is wrong and so much of what’s wrong seems beyond our power to address, it feels good to fix something concrete. There is absolutely no reason any animal should suffer so that some antiquated emblem of a lapsed empire can wear historically redolent headgear. I mean, come on. Patagonia is making professional rock-climbing gear out of Juicy Fruit wrappers from 1987. You can find some fake fur good enough for a dude whose job is 95 percent just standing there. Get this done, Luke Pollard, and I promise to use my influence at The Ringer to have your new EP, Cincinnati Starshine, added to Spotify playlists.
But then, what counts as a big problem is obviously a matter of perspective. To a Canadian bear, Canadian bear-hunting is presumably a big problem. To King Charles, it’s a big problem that Princess Diana’s brother wrote a memoir that makes him look bad. It’s an even bigger problem that Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle, have moved back to the U.K. despite being more or less at odds with the rest of the royal family. Charles, it’s thought, would like to reconcile with his younger son, who would like to reconcile with him, but pride and resentment complicate everything in families; no sooner does one man make an overture of peace than some fresh misunderstanding emerges, leading back to an icy detente.
A tall guard in a bearskin hat can protect a palace. If only there were guards—tiny, perhaps wearing hedgehog caps—who could protect the human heart.
A bear says …
If only there were guards who could protect my eyes from having read that conclusion. No, I will not resort to irony. I shall pour myself another cognac and perhaps see if Clarissa would like to play a game of lawn tennis.
Lance Corporal Philip Norton Thorpe-Norton, sentry, Buckingham Palace, says …
[Screaming so loudly pigeons explode from the palace roof] MAKE WAY FOR THE KING’S GUARD!
