CROWNING STORY

The Queen’s coronation is brought to life with glorious colour footage of the whole nation having a knees-up, in an ITV special

The day Britain turned on to TV was 2 June 1953. More than half a million sets were sold in the run-up to the Queen’s coronation at Westminster Abbey, 65 years ago today. An estimated 27 million people watched the service, cramming ten around every set.

But it wasn’t just the historic decision to televise the coronation that left a permanent video record of the day. More than 100 amateur films of coronation celebrations around the country have been saved and restored. Together they offer a magical, mesmerising evocation of the great day, as presenter Alexander Armstrong discovers in the ITV tribute, The Queen’s Coronation In Colour.

The most touching comes from Aberfan, the Welsh mining town. It would be engulfed by tragedy 13 years later, when a landslide buried the primary school, killing 116 children and 28 adults. The footage gives a rare insight into a happier side of the town’s history.

As in countless other communities, trestle tables lined the streets with heaps of party food, treats and drinks. Red, white and blue streamers adorned houses. People were laughing and dancing.

But as in most mining communities, Aberfan had a raucous sense of humour all its own. Women pinned up their biggest, laciest bloomers along with the bunting. One miner, dressed in a romper suit and bonnet, danced along the street swigging from a milk bottle. Around his neck he wore a sign: ‘First Coronation Baby, bit simple!’

In Liverpool, a young Alison Steadman, then six, was beside herself with anticipation. ‘The build-up to the coronation was so exciting,’ the actress tells Alexander. ‘It was one of the happiest periods of my childhood. From the

moment we woke up it was, “Hurry, we want the party, we want the television!”’

And in London’s Mall, an 11-year-old Michael Crawford was bursting with excitement. He had looked forward to this day for weeks, cutting out every newspaper story he could find about it and sticking them in a scrapbook he’s treasured for 65 years. ‘This brought our country together,’ he says. ‘It was stirring.’

In the Abbey the Queen’s cousin,

Prince Michael of Kent, then aged ten, was serving as a page. ‘It was a wonderful day,’ he says. ‘I remember how glamorous the Queen looked, a radiant figure.’

For ballroom maestro Len Goodman in Bethnal Green, the coronation was a triumph. ‘We were the only home in the street with a TV, bought especially,’ he says. ‘It was Christmas with knobs on.’

The set was a status symbol, but it wasn’t high quality. ‘You got a terrible,

grainy picture, like looking through fog.’ Even so, the whole street crammed into their sitting room, and those who couldn’t squeeze in peered through the door.

That’s a charming image, but of all the film clips in this extraordinary documentary, the street party in Aberfan will linger longest in the memory. Alexander Armstrong certainly thinks so: he organises a screening for the townsfolk. When the projector rolls, there are cries of delight as people recognise their friends and family.

As Alexander says, ‘Splendid, solemn and glorious though everything in Westminster Abbey was, something even more magical was happening up and down the country.’ The Queen’s Coronation In Colour, Monday, 9pm, ITV.