Elizabeth’s crowning seemed like a new dawn. But the reign of Charles begins in a kingdom under a cloud
No one under the age of 75 can have anything but the haziest memory of the last time we did this. Britain has not witnessed a coronation since 1953, and even those who remember the crowning of Elizabeth II will have little to guide them. We are a different country now, and Charles a very different prospective monarch – if only because of one simple, unavoidable fact: he is an old king.
Start not with him, but with us. The Britain of 1953 would scarcely recognise itself in the Britain of 2023. Obviously the entire world has transformed. Ask someone who recalls the last coronation and they’ll soon tell you about the novel thrill of seeing the ceremony on live television, perhaps at the home of a neighbour who was the one person on the street lucky enough to own a “set”. Today, almost every one of us has a supercomputer in our pocket, complete with a screen able to carry live colour pictures from anywhere on Earth – or even of a distant planet.
