Thousands march on replica parade route ahead of coronation
▶ As King Charles III’s coronation approaches, Gemma White explores the cultural impact the decision to televise Queen Elizabeth II’s 1953 coronation ceremony had on the country’s monarchy and the media
A full-scale replica of the procession route has been laid out at a Royal Air Force base to help ensure the coronation ceremony for the UK’s King Charles III and Queen Consort Camilla goes off without a hitch.
It will be the largest parade of British military personnel since the funeral of former prime minister Winston Churchill in 1965.
More than 7,000 troops rehearsed on Sunday at RAF Odiham in Hampshire, about 85km west of London.
Military personnel will march from Westminster Abbey to Buckingham Palace during the coronation on Saturday.
The parade route was mapped out at the airbase using a pace stick.
Members of the military, including sailors, soldiers and pilots from Commonwealth countries and overseas territories, gathered in formation at the airbase for the rehearsal.
“Putting it all together for the first time, actually there’s a tinge of excitement,” said First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Ben Key, head of the Royal Navy.
“For us to have the opportunity and the privilege to play a small role in the coronation of His Majesty and Her Majesty in just under a week’s time is a mixture of excited anticipation, probably a few nerves and great pride.”
He said the military was proud to take part in Saturday’s ceremony because of the support of King Charles and his mother, Queen Elizabeth II.
“We have enormous confidence in King Charles as our commander-in-chief,” Lord Admiral Key added.
“It’s a great opportunity for us to show our allegiance to him and I’m sure that his mother will look down with great pride on the day.
“I’m looking forward to joining up with my family, who are hoping to be in the crowds in London enjoying the atmosphere.
“No doubt I’ll then shed my uniform and pull on some incognito clothes to join in because it is going to be a great national celebration.”
The practice march began at the weekend with a cry of “coronation procession, by the centre, quick march”.
Every soldier, sailor or pilot planted their left foot to the beat of a bass drum as they made their way around the coronation route.
Personnel from Commonwealth states led the way, while the Household Cavalry were at the rear.
Organisers were creative in how they marked the route, with a pair of rugby posts playing the part of Buckingham Palace.
A set of cones marked Admiralty Arch at the entrance to The Mall. A brown minibus represented the Gold State Coach, in which King Charles and Camilla will travel during the event.
Marchers split up and reformed in a routine they will replicate on Saturday.
Members of mounted cavalry divisions marched on foot to avoid “foreign object debris” such as horseshoes or manure being left on the path.
But one animal was used in the rehearsal – an Irish wolfhound called Seamus.
He is the mascot of the Irish Guards and the only dog to be included in the parade.
Soldiers have spent weeks polishing the boots they will wear during the coronation procession, but they have marched so much in rehearsals they were permitted to wear more comfortable footwear to protect them against blisters.
The event marked the only full daytime rehearsal of the coronation march.
A night-time rehearsal will be held this week.
Preparations for King Charles’s coronation are at an advanced stage, with the Stone of Destiny arriving from Scotland at the weekend.
The ancient 125kg stone has been used in the coronation of British monarchs for about 1,000 years.
The artefact will be returned to Edinburgh Castle after the coronation.
The event has been described as the most diverse coronation in the country’s history.
Aliya Azam will be the Muslim representative at the event, while faith leaders from Jewish, Hindu, Sikh and Buddhist communities will also attend to reflect the religious range of the king’s 15 realms.
They will be asked to present the monarch with pieces of coronation regalia, including bracelets, the robe, the ring and the glove.
When her father King George VI died on February 6, 1952, Princess Elizabeth, as she was until that moment, was on tour in Kenya with Prince Philip.
Becoming Queen of the United Kingdom at the age of 25, she would go on to reign for 70 years and 214 days as Queen Elizabeth II, the longest of any British monarch.
Her coronation on June 2, 1953, the fourth and final of the 20th century, became and remains a groundbreaking event in global history thanks to the decision for it to be televised and broadcast around the world.
The sight of the new Queen on television screens brought royalty into the living rooms of her subjects, moving towards demystifying the monarchy in a way that has evolved into today’s royal family with their press officers, social media accounts and tell-all memoirs.
News of her father’s death wasn’t relayed to the princess, but to Prince Philip, after a message sent to the British embassy in Nairobi wasn’t passed on because it was written in code.
Princess Elizabeth’s private secretary, Martin Charteris heard the news from a reporter who was covering the tour.
“Mike crawls in [to the room] as he doesn’t want the princess to look up and see him so he’s crawling out of her sightline and gesturing to get hold of the radio,” the princess’s lady-in-waiting and prince Philip’s cousin, Pamela Hicks, said on her daughter India Hicks’s podcast.
“He secretly turns it very, very low and hears all the stations [playing] the same dirgelike music, being very solemn, so it’s obviously true.
“Philip just takes the newspaper and covers his face with it, hides behind it and says: ‘This will be such a shock.’”
Landing in London on February 7, 1952, Hicks revealed that courtiers had to bring a black dress on board as princess Elizabeth didn’t have any mourning clothes. The incident started a tradition of royals always travelling with mourning clothes.
Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation at Westminster Abbey in London was the first to be televised around the world.
According to education platform MacMillan, in 1953, 50 per cent of households in the USA had televisions, while in Britain, fewer than two million homes had a TV set.
As a result of the coronation, there was a huge rise in the number of British homes with televisions, with the BBC reporting: “The number of TV licences shot up from 763,000 in 1951 to 3.2 million in 1954. Many see the coronation as UK television’s tipping point.”
In the UK, it is estimated that 27 million people watched the coronation on televisions at home or on screens set up in pubs, village halls and cinemas across the country when it was broadcast on the BBC. The 1953 coronation was the first to be televised in full. While BBC cameras had followed the outdoor procession of the coronation of princess Elizabeth’s parents, King George VI and Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon in 1937, they had not been allowed inside Westminster Abbey for the ceremony.
It was Prince Philip who, wishing to modernise the monarchy and make them more visible, suggested the ceremony be televised at a meeting of the coronation committee of which he was the chairman. Former prime minister Winston Churchill is alleged to have opposed the idea, saying that it would be “unfitting that the whole ceremony, not only in its secular but also in its religious and spiritual aspects, should be presented as if it were a theatrical performance”.
The Queen Mother is also said to have disapproved the idea, but the princess sided with her husband.
It’s impossible not to overstate the impact the televised ceremony had on the UK populace, as an article from
The Times the following day noted: “At first it was difficult to grasp the fact that what one saw was not a news film but historic events unfolding even as one watched.
“Yesterday, by penetrating at last, even vicariously, into the solemn mysteriousness of the Abbey scene, multitudes who had hoped merely to see for themselves the splendour and the pomp, found themselves comprehending for the first time the true nature of the occasion,” it continues.
The effects of the June 2, 1953 coronation not only paved the way for the British monarchy’s relationship with the media and public today, but it also started a media revolution in the UK.
In the United States, the coronation was televised on all four networks – CBS, NBC, DuMont and ABC.
The inclusion of advertising breaks throughout the ceremony, while upsetting some British sensibilities, acted as a catalyst for the launch of a second British television channel, ITV (Independent Television) two years later in 1955, which included advertising and competed with the monopoly held by the BBC.
Televising the event also made unprecedented strides in drawing back the curtain between the inner workings of the ruling classes and the people of Britain.
“Parliament wasn’t broadcast, there was a lot of secrecy and very little accountability,” historian David Kynaston told the BBC. “But suddenly, this new medium could transmit quasi-private events. It was quite a shock.”
It can be argued that a direct line can be drawn from Prince Philip’s recognition of the power of the media as a public relations tool back in 1953, to Prince Harry’s recent appearances in the media promoting his autobiography and Netflix documentary.
The coronation laid the groundwork for creating an intricate relationship between monarchy and media, an association Prince Harry has lifted the lid on.
“Within my family, you have the newspapers laid out pretty much in every single palace,” Prince Harry told ITV’s Tom Bradby. “My family have been briefing the press solidly for well over a decade.”
In a bid to modernise the monarchy and make them more visible, Prince Philip suggested the ceremony be televised