IN the end, Charles seemed reluctant to leave the balcony. He lingered for several seconds longer after Camilla had stepped back into the dry, waving on the half-turn at the flag-wavers below who were chanting from under their ponchos and umbrellas “God save the King” at him through the big, splodgy raindrops.
Long to rain over us indeed.
King Charles III waves on the half-turn, apparently reluctant to leave the balcony
The weather curtailed the celebratory flypast but still the Red Arrows scorched exhilaratingly through the battleship grey skies, Charles following their progress up The Mall with his finger. They left behind a trail of blue smoke which drifted mockingly over Green Park, suggesting that the clouds had broken and the sun would be out.
It was a mirage. Each of the four coronations of the 20th Century was held in a downpour, and the first of the 21st proved no different. In these fair isles, the weather is an adversary to be cheerfully overcome and then complained about afterwards, and so it added to the Britishness of the occasion: the pomp and the ceremony, the anoraks and the mackintoshes.
One of the many wonderfully eccentric characters on The Mall
Many of those cheering crowds had spent the night camped out in The Mall in tents and folding chairs and surrounded by wonderful eccentricity. As dusk had fallen on them, along with a sharp shower, more crowds came out just to stare at the other crowds.
“You’ve come to look at the English,” said a man adjusting the flashing fairylights around his tent, “in all their glorious craziness.”
A patriotic dog seeks a vantage point on The Mall
There were men in Union flag suits, dogs in Union flag pushchairs, and a woman in a St Edward’s Crown who waved gracefully at passers-by as if she were Elizabeth II.
“She’s globally famous,” said the consort of the queen as she posed for a picture. “She’s got TikTok in Australia nailed.”
Anita Atkinson and the Durham royalists in The Mall on Friday evening
Two London plane trees down The Mall from the Victoria Monument was one of the most famous of the “royal superfans”, Anita Atkinson from Wolsingham. She had been sleeping out in her chair for a week – “where else in the UK can you camp out for nowt”, she said – although she’d spent the previous night in a Manchester hotel ahead of her celebrity appearance on ITV’s Good Morning, live from the Coronation Street cobbles. In the Rovers Return, she barked out to presenter Dermot O’Leary that she needed a cup of tea – “I didn’t realise we were still live”, she said.
She was wearing a Union Jack bobble hat, a coronation t-shirt, artfully ripped jeans which revealed Union flag leggings, and Union flag Doc Martens.
“I’m here because I want, like everyone else here, to let the King see he’s got our support because I think he’s not so sure of himself after all the bad press he’s had over the decades,” she said. “But these people are the silent majority. You don’t see them in the paper, but they have spoken in their thousands.”
She was accompanied by her daughter Ruth Sabrosa, from Seaham, and her grand-daughters Ania, 12, Amalia, 10 and Suvana, four.
Alongside her was Lisa, from Darlington, and Lewis Langstaff-Wood, 14, with his mother, Laura, from Witton-le-Wear. “I’m a monarchist so I had to come down,” said Lewis, on his third royal camp-out after the Platinum Jubilee and the Queen’s funeral.
“It’s a moment in history,” said Owen Weir, from Howden-le-Wear. “It isn’t everyday you can show respect on such a big scale, and this” – his arm sweeping along the grand panoply from the floodlit Buckingham Palace as he paused to take it all in – “this is what we do best: the pomp and ceremony of it all.”
Anita Atkinson and the Durham royalists in The Mall wave on Saturday morning
At 6.30am on Coronation Day, they were all waving merrily as I passed, their front row positions guaranteed as the lines behind them deepened. I was being escorted to my fabulous vantage point on a temporary grandstand built on to the side of the Victoria Monument, which is one of the world’s most famous traffic islands as it looks directly across the road at the palace balcony.
At that early hour, people were soon at work on the balcony, dressing it with regal burgundy and gold robing, and then preparing it for their majesties with vigorous vacuuming, the noise of the Henry VIII the Hoover clearly audible over the hubbub of the city.
At 8.30am, the Royal Standard was raised on the palace roof as Charles and Camilla were driven in through the side gates – presumably, they’d been kipping in a tent in The Mall like everyone else and were now turning up in good time for their robing.
And then it started raining, a little light drizzle at first, nothing to dampen the excitement, but soon bigger drops and harder falls.
One of the squadron of streetsweepers polishing the road outside the palace
As it fell, a squadron of streetsweeping vehicles polished the road and the guard of honour, resplendent in their red tunics and black bearskins, marched into position. They were tweaked with precision into immaculate order by an officer with a large sword and loud voice who ordered them individually millimetres forward or back – in Britain, you can’t get a passport in time but you can get the straightest, smartest line.
At 10.25, the guardsmen clicked their heels to attention and held their standard aloft as the coronation procession drew forward under the palace arch. Six white horses pulled the black and gold Diamond Jubilee State Carriage (below) crunching across the red gravel.
It made an extraordinary noise, like a thousand people slapping their thighs in unison, and, after the anthem, London fell amazingly quiet: no planes in the sky, no traffic on the roads, no sirens wailing in the distance. The wet had even quietened the squeaks of the parakeets in the trees, so there was just the rumble on the road of the iron wheels, the clop of hundreds of hooves on the tarmac, the chinking and jangling of their bridles, and the plip and the plop of rain on umbrellas.
And then came the distant cheers of the crowds in the parks watching on the big screens as they caught their first glimpse of their King on his way to be crowned.
As the procession disappeared down The Mall, those around the Victoria Monument had two long hours to fill marooned on the sodden traffic island. Fortunately, a toilet had been built underneath the grandstand for the inevitable calls of nature – within sight of the palace, we had our own throne room.
Sgt Abbie Dixon, Durham's representative as a royal routeliner on the Victoria Monument
Evenly spaced around the monument were about 20 police officers, exposed to the elements in their black tunics with puddles collecting in the rims of their hats. From Durham was Temporary Police Sergeant Abbie Dixon, 25, from Durham City. “It’s been lovely, great,” she said, shaking the rain from her sleeves as the stirring, soaring choral notes of Zadok the Priest filled the air. Charles had been anointed with sacred oil from the Holy Land; the crowd outside had been awashed by blessed rain from the London skies.
From the monument grandstand, we watchers had a splendid view of the preparations to make everything perfect for when the world’s television cameras were turned back on as Charles returned. The squadron of streetsweeping vehicles, in formation, went round polishing the road; a van pulling a drag combed the red gravel and a chap with leafblower blew sheets of water from the footpaths.
The Gold State Carriage returns the newly crowned king to the palace
The royal return was preceded by hundreds of marching bearskins against which the Gold State Carriage gleamed magnificently as it entered the palace gates and crunched across the pristine gravel. The 1762 vehicle is notoriously uncomfortable, with Victoria complaining after her coronation in 1838 that it rolled like a ship on the sea. In 2023, it could have sailed of its own accord up The Mall.
With the king safely in his palace, the exuberant royalists were swarmed in red, white and blue around the Victoria Monument and up to the palace railings. Their excitement was tangible, and those who reached the railings cheered as if they had won the lottery.
Chris Lloyd on the Victoria Monument with King Charles and Queen Camilla waving at the camera from the balcony behind
They greeted their new king as he took to the balcony with spontaneous cheers, chants and renditions of the national anthem as he waved back at them. Following the Red Arrows flypast, perhaps because a crown is not as effective in repelling rain as a peaked cap, the balcony appearance was not prolonged, but Charles and Camilla did return for a second drenching, which was marked by an unscheduled and unsynchronised flypast by ducks from Green Park.
And Charles appeared loathe to leave. Soaking up the atmosphere and waving on the half-turn in response to the undying cheers of the faithful.
Despite the weather, the majestic ceremony symbolised that the monarchy, and the nation, had, by following its old traditions, renewed itself after the death of the old queen, and it had been reborn in a new Carolean era of hopefulness. It was a privilege to witness it and an honour to get soaked to the skin in the process.
How London will probably remember the 2023 coronation: puddles and patriotism in Piccadilly
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