So, at long last and after much preparation, we’ve had the Coronation of our latest Monarch King Charles III. Following after the long and very successful reign of his late mother, Queen Elizabeth II, His Majesty the King has big shoes to fill and in her an example of how to properly undertake the job that he has trained so long for. Whether he does follow the late Queen’s illustrious example in how to reign as a Constitutional Monarch is something that only the passing of time will reveal.
As was expected, the military aspect of the Coronation and the procession from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Abbey and back again was superb. All the members of the UK military who took part did the King and the country proud. At one point I shed a tear for my late father a military and merchant navy man who had a deep love of military ceremonial and military music who would have loved to have seen the troops on parade on such an auspicious occasion.
Coronations often reflect the interests and wills of the particular Monarch who is at the centre of them and just as there were differences between the coronation of King George V and Queen Victoria, such as when George V had some of the more anti Catholic parts of the Coronation liturgy toned down a bit, so were there differences between this latest coronation and the last one. Some of the differences and departures from tradition I liked, some I was ambivalent about but some I did not altogether like. I disliked the fact that there was not, as was the case with Queen Elizabeth’s Coronation, ranks of Peers of the Realm in full regalia present at the Coronation. I thought this a mistake as Britain does national ceremonial better than almost other nation in the world and not having this aspect took away a chance to have more of this visually impressive sight as a part of the occasion. The use of mixed sex choirs was an innovation which although changing the register of the choral music upwards didn’t cause as many problems as some might have feared. Similarly the input from those of minority faiths did not impinge as much as I had feared on the proceedings as this was still a recognisably Church of England service. A space was found in the Coronation service for Roman Catholics, non-conformist Christians, Jews, Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus and others which neither devalued the Anglican traditions at the centre of the coronation service nor put the members of these faiths in positions where they might have felt uncomfortable.
What I did feel uncomfortable about was the Met Police’s treatment of the anti Monarchy protestors. There was probably little need for the Met to go in as heavily as they did on members of the Republic group. Their protest should have been facilitated maybe by allowing them to protest near but not too close to the coronation. It might have been better for the Met to have allowed some sort of anti monarchy protest gathering somewhere down Northumberland Avenue off Trafalgar Square, towards the Embankment end, rather than have the Met bring yet more opprobrium down on themselves. Similarly the Met appeared to have some faulty intelligence about the prospect of rape alarms being thrown at horses and this failure ended up with members of a long standing night time safety group apparently being arrested in Soho for giving out rape alarms to those who might be vulnerable to attack. Although the Met did a reasonably good job from what I can see of managing the huge crowds, the event has left the Met with questions that need answering about certain aspects of the policing of the Coronation.
Of course there were small problems during the event such as the King and Queen arriving a few minutes early to the Abbey, but these problems seemed to be ironed out quite swiftly. One of the most surprising things for me was as this was the first British coronation of the age of memes was that the main meme I have been seeing was not of the King and Queen themselves, but Penny Mordaunt with a sword. Ms Mordaunt may not have intended to do so but her stunning dress which is an interpretation of the Privy Council ceremonial uniform, and the ability to hold a heavy sword upright for such a long period has captured people’s imaginations.
All in all the Coronation went as well as many would have expected with few mishaps and a massive audience worldwide got to see the precise and well planned ceremonial activity that Britain leads the world in.
As for the television coverage, we chose to watch the Coronation on GB News rather than the BBC or Sky and we did so because of the presence of Dr David Starkey on the GB News commentary team. It was good to have a very knowledgable historian commenting on the proceedings and I’m glad that we took the decision to watch the GB News coverage as despite the occasional technical issue, such as sound feeds dropping out, their coverage does not seem to have been afflicted as much by the political hobby horses of presenters and guests as the BBC and ITV coverage appeared to have had.
God Save The King. Let us hope that he’s a good king and not as stubborn or as arrogant as one of his previous regal namesakes, Charles I.
