DROP THE BAROQUE

I read the Reverend Walker’s column

(SOUNDING BOARD, NOVEMBER) on King Charles’s forthcoming coronation with interest, but on this occasion I could not agree with him.

Though the idea of a Dutch coronation conducted in a drawing room is enough to fill anyone with horror (one thinks of William IV’s disastrous experiment with simplicity, which saw Britain dubbed as a “half-crown” nation), I roll my eyes at the baroque flummery of the British monarchy. Do we need all that absurd ermine or the grotesque wedding cake of the Gold State Coach that poor King Charles will be rolled along on?

Britain has become something between a historical reenactment society and a live-action Gormenghast, in which no silliness can be disposed of even when everybody has forgotten the point of it.

Why don’t we drop the baroque and go back to our finest medieval coronation traditions, before we swaddled our powerless princes in pointless pomp? Henry IV wasn’t hauled to his coronation on the back of a golden cart, he rode to Westminster Abbey astride a white warhorse.

And a coronation ceremony on the medieval model could stop treating the Supreme Governor of the Church of England like a Disney princess, and instead focus on the religion. Medieval kings would fast, confess, and hear three masses before even thinking of putting a crown on.

Another fine medieval custom sadly missing is the making of knights. Your medieval sovereign would have thought it a poor show not to use the occasion to dub a few dozen of England’s most promising young squires. Paring back the jewellery could focus the millions of watching minds on the real essence of the ritual and liturgy of coronation.

Joanna Browning

BROADSTAIRS, KENT