Peter Hitchens: King Charles can cut as pomp as he likes – it will never be enough for our ruling Radicals
Will the coronation be a failure? It’s impossible to be sure because we know so little about it, but a lot of the signs are bad. How can things go so well when the official food for the occasion is some kind of vegetable pancake?
Will our new king dedicate his life to God, as his mother did, or to Net Zero, as he seems to want to do? How Christian will the ceremony be? I all welcome other religions, but it is our Christian laws, customs, culture and civilization that have attracted many to live here. And I believe it is our Anglican settlement that creates the space of tolerance in which other faiths flourish among us.
Few people realize that we are the last country in the world to hold such a celebration. The remaining kings and queens of Europe have simple enthronements, almost as solemn as appointing a new administrator.
Our rituals are rituals of memory, power, loyalty, and approval, stretching back a millennium to the origins of Christian Europe. And if you read the order of service from the 1953 event, or watch a film about it, you will feel strongly that the monarchy of that time was not ashamed of its existence.
Will the coronation be a failure? It is impossible to be sure because we know so little about it, but a lot of signs are bad, writes Peter Hitchens
Every day there are more rumors of less traditional coronations
I’m not sure this is correct now. It was evident that something had gone badly wrong at the funeral of the late Duke of Edinburgh, when the government of national panic compelled Her Majesty the Queen to sit alone with half her face concealed by a mask, which I must describe as ‘probably useless’.
When the Queen passed away last year, I was moved enough to queue for hours to see her lying in her state. But I never forgave the authorities for the muffled and feeble celebrations that surrounded her death. It was the most significant death since Winston Churchill’s in 1965 – which marked a great triumph worthy of the Roman Empire and ended with crowds lining railway tracks as he was carried home on a steam train into the heart of the rural countryside. The nation he saved.
Millions (myself included) would have stood by the line had the Royal Train been used to carry the Queen from Scotland to London, or from London to Windsor or (preferably) both. But no, she was rushed south on a plane and then driven in a dull car to Windsor, after a startlingly poor military parade. Were officials afraid of the past?
When the Queen passed away last year, I was moved enough to queue for hours to see her lying in her state. But I never forgave the authorities for the muffled and feeble celebrations surrounding her death. Pictured: the funeral of the late Queen
The extremists who rule the country see all these moves as signs of weakness. And those who cherish a thousand years of greatness know that it will not last long if it continues in this way
Every day there are more rumors of less traditional coronations.
Well, I will never be a royal advisor. Charles decided long ago that I was unacceptable and canceled a meeting he had originally wanted with me, because his politically correct aides had warned him off. But if I had gone, I should have told him, and say again now, that there is no point in trying to appease or pacify the enemies of the Crown. do what you love. Submit to taxes, embrace political correctness, wear a mask and sit alone at your wife’s low-key funeral, downplay her pomp, and sideline your embarrassed relatives. It won’t work
The extremists who rule the country see all these moves as signs of weakness. And those who cherish a thousand years of greatness know that it will not last long if it continues in this way.
