Operation Golden Orb
REVEALED: Secret coronation plan for Charles that officials have dubbed...
FOR more than ten years, a panel of the great and the good have been meeting under a cloak of secrecy to discuss every detail of that most significant of regal occasions: the coronation of Prince Charles.
So confidential are their discussions that not even the name of the group has been made public.
But now, after a deeply embarrassing error by a Government official, the codename of the committee can be revealed as Golden Orb. The name was disclosed after it was left unredacted in a Whitehall document on an otherwise separate matter.
The group, made up of leading members of the aristocracy and other dignitaries, decides every last detail of the event.
It is chaired by the Duke of Norfolk, who serves as Earl Marshal, in charge of all State ceremonial events involving the Monarch.
The panel works without interference from Buckingham Palace or Clarence House, and is constitutionally autonomous.
The Duke also chairs a committee codenamed London Bridge, which is planning the Queen’s funeral, and works under similar conditions.
Plans for Prince Philip’s service are codenamed Forth Bridge.
The accidental revelation has upset courtiers who would prefer to keep such a sensitive matter out of the public eye.
Dr Anna Whitelock, a Royal historian and TV presenter, said it was apt that the committee was named after part of the Crown Jewels used in the coronation.
She said: ‘The orb is a hollow ball of gold and a Christian symbol of authority signifying Christ’s dominion over the world represented in the next Monarch’s power. The name of the committee reminds us that at the heart of the ceremony, the King is made to swear vows of awesome severity, not to his country, or even his subjects, but to God.’
Details of Charles’s ceremony are closely guarded, but it is understood it will be a less grand affair than Elizabeth II’s in 1953. That involved more than 8,000 guests cramming into Westminster Abbey for a threehour service. It went on for so long that many peers smuggled in alcohol underneath their ermine robes.
It is believed that Charles’s coronation will be shorter, with many of the places allocated to charities by a ballot. Seats will be set aside for peers, diplomats, military officers, religious figures and representatives from the 15 countries of which he will also be King.
Charles, who will be the oldest Monarch to ever take the crown, will also retain the title of ‘Defender of the Faith’ like his predecessors despite reports he would be ‘Defender of Faith’ instead.
Clarence House and Buckingham Palace declined to comment.