Horses loose in London latest: Blood on road and smashed vehicles after horses tear through city

The Household Cavalry, jangling up the Mall, are an important part of the King’s official birthday parade.

It’s a big, tourist-friendly event in June, with its annual Trooping the Color ceremony.

And if these runaway horses were getting ready for that parade, then they would have been preparing for an event that must really test their temperament.

Pressing in along the route will be crowds, cameras and all the commotion of a summer’s day out.

Last year, in his first parade as monarch, King Charles was on a horse that certainly got lively with all the pressure. It was variously described as “frisky”, “spicy” and “unruly” by commentators.

And going back to the preparations ahead of the late Queen’s Platinum Jubilee in 2022, when the media encampment was being set up, a soldier was thrown from his horse outside Buckingham Palace. An embarrassingly public place, but these things happen.