In this article Sir Edmund Leach makes use of anthropological concepts in order to interpret a rite of passage to which he was himself subjected to, upon being knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1975. He compares it to a headhunting ritual from Borneo, which he witnessed in 1947, and suggests that both reveal the same structure as a rite of passage, including a significant sacrificial theme. The article is at the same time a fine ethnography of the knighting ceremony at Buckingham Palace, as well as a reflection upon what it means to do anthropology.
