The Last Curtsey: The End of the Debutante Era In 1958

An excerpt from Fiona MacCarthy:

Half a century ago this week, a strange ceremony ended. I was among the last 400 girls arriving at Buckingham Palace to make our formal curtseys to the Queen. It was the usual wild March weather, cold winds ruffling our full-skirted silk dresses, our mothers in their furs and our moustached fathers wore top hats as we lined up by the railings, gaped at by waiting crowds kept at a discreet distance as if in an Ealing comedy.

The scene had been made poignant by the recent unexpected announcement from the Palace that these would be the last presentations. We were a soon-to-be extinguished species, the last of the English debutantes. How had we got there in the first place? What was the selection process for what Jessica Mitford, most reluctant of debs, described as "the specific, upper-class version of a puberty rite"?

By and large it was family tradition. Most debutantes were presented by their mothers, who themselves had been presented. In the circles in which I grew up, curtseying to the Queen was not a matter for discussion, it was just a thing you did. Why did it stop so suddenly in 1958?

It turns out that by analyzing the iridium layer they found out it was a big asteroid that hit off the coast of the Yucatan peninsula.