I too had waited 70 years for such a day.. it was unforgettable
You miss one royal coronation on the telly, and you have to wait 70 years before another comes along. I was nine when the dazzlingly pretty Queen Elizabeth II was crowned in 1953, but we had no TV.
And there were times when I thought I’d never see King Charles III have his big day in Westminster Abbey. He must have thought the same, occasionally.
But I finally got to watch the great spectacle on a big screen in the tap room of the Old White Bear in Cross Hills.
At last week’s mammoth Buckingham Palace garden party, singer Lionel Richie gushed: “We’re walking in history.” The rest of us are just spectators.
For me, this was a first, but for Mrs R beside me, it was her second coronation-on-the-box. She saw the enthronement of the Queen in black and white in Avondale Street, Wakefield.
This time, we are two together, watching another couple of septuagenarians go through the greatest show of the century. It was a marvellous spectacle, without doubt. Unforgettable. We shall never see another.
There were moments I’d rather forget. I almost retched at the sight of a grinning Duke of York, resplendent in black and red velvet robes, striding royally down the Abbey aisle.
SULKY
Medals jingling on his lounge suit, Prince Harry looked sulky, as if he wished he was somewhere else, with somebody who actually was somewhere else. You could hardly see him behind the plume on the Princess Royal’s hat.
Strangely, for me the most poignant moment of the whole event was a woman in white, struggling to rise from her wheelchair to stand in respect as the royals processed by. Genuine sacrifice.
My local was decorated with flags and bunting, but only a handful of locals gathered in the saloon bar, where an even bigger screen was on for the show.
Fellow puffer-nutter friend Chris was properly dressed in purple shirt and tie “the nearest I could get to the right thing”. But I also detected a shortfall of reverence. When church leaders brought on the golden bird with the holy oil, the cry “wotcher, cock!” went up.
At the mention of Prince Harry, another grinned: “He’s got his plane ticket in his pocket.”
As the ceremony went into overdrive, with sceptre, orb, ring and what looked like the royal oven glove, a voice said: “This is getting like Monty Python!” And when the crown was placed on the King’s head, I heard: “That fit you all right? Are you sure?”
But I didn’t hear a rousing chorus of “God save the King” when Archbishop Welby called for an oath of allegiance from the audience.
How much more like it should be than 1953, when total reverence reigned.
Mrs R, who was seven at the time of the Queen’s Coronation, recalls: “I lived in a street where you were a miner or on the railway. It was in a miner’s house, Mr Steel, that I saw the Coronation.
“We each brought a chair to his front room, and sat in rows like a cinema.
“I don’t remember any men being there. I had seen the television before, but it was always cowboys and things
As it went into overdrive, with sceptre, orb and the royal oven glove, a voice said ‘It’s getting like Monty Python!’
like that. It was very exciting, sitting together watching the ceremony on this tiny, tiny screen.
“My mother made me a costume: a white dress with red and blue velvet ribbons. We had a street party, with sandwiches and jelly. The Wakefield Express came and took pictures.
“It wasn’t like the first time,” she said 70 years on, as the King and Queen went out into the rain. “There wasn’t a magic moment.”
No fancy new frock for her either, but we both wore Union Jack bowlers.
My family had no telly but big brother John, who was 15 at the time, remembers people crowding round outside the window of a house in our terrace to catch a glimpse of the magic box in the corner.
They can’t have seen much on the 9in screens of those days, with grainy pictures in black and white only.
I first saw the event on Pathe News at the cinema, months later.
Compared with 1953, it’s a different world. The Bear’s telly is bigger than my front window. The BBC camera work is pitchperfect. We had a much better view than most of the guests.
But there was no Dimbleby in the
Abbey or commentary box, a break with tradition. The old broadcasting royal family has made way for a new generation, with Huw Edwards wearing the crown. The same hushed tones prevail.
At the crowning of Charles II in 1661, revellers in the capital got spectacularly drunk, according to the diarist Samuel Pepys. There was none of that yesterday in the Bear.
But lotsa fun. We were all given names for the day. I was The Royal Scribe. And Dave King laughed: “I’ve been King longer than he has.”
Joker Mick was serious for once: “It’s fantastic for the country that people come from all over the world to see this. We shall see nothing like it in our lives.”
And truly, this was British pomp and circumstance at, well, its most pompous.
The Establishment, civil, religious and military, drawn up in ranks of praise and honour for the new King and his Queen, visible for the nation to observe in colour and real time. The final balcony scene wasn’t Romeo and Juliet but at least the pantomime villains of the family didn’t show up.
And the King and Queen couldn’t tilt their heads back to watch the helicopter fly-past and the Red Arrows, for fear their crowns would fall off.
But thousands who cheered in the rain were rewarded with an encore.
Will the pageant shift the dial on declining support for the monarchy?
Only time will tell, and inevitably His Majesty will have less of it on the throne than his beloved mother.
The King and Queen couldn’t tilt their heads back to watch the Red Arrows, for fear their crowns would fall off