CORONATION: The Crowning of Elizabeth II by Hugo Vickers
£12.00
King Charles III is to be crowned in Westminster Abbey in May 2023, seventy years after the Coronation of the Queen.
To us now the events of that June day in 1953 seem part of the past, as if belonging to a different age. Yet the Queen’s Coronation was a day of national celebration, attended by figures from all over the world. It was enjoyed by millions who listened to it on their radios or crowded into front rooms to watch the flickering black and white images on television, a medium then in its infancy.
This book traces the involvement of the Queen in the months of intricate planning leading up to the Coronation following the death of George VI in February 1952. It tells the story of the complicated negotiations between the Cabinet, the Earl Marshal (the Duke of Norfolk), the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Dean of Westminster.
Officials from the BBC, supported by the general public, successfully fought to have the decision not to televise the service reversed. Garter King of Arms had sleepless nights about the Queen curtseying in the Abbey. Anxious peers squabbled over invitations. Princes, Sultans and Beys pleaded for seats in the Abbey. The Duke of Windsor was told not to come and the Queen of ‘the Friendly Isles’ delighted the crowds lining London’s streets by defying the pouring rain in her open carriage. The remarkable story of a unique day.
Paperback
198 x 154 mms, 132 pages + 8 pages plates
ISBN 978-0-957119-6-1
