Coronation reflections: what a weekend pt. 4
Some reflections on different aspects of the coronation of Charles III
A few days ago I wrote about how some of the traditional ceremonial offices at a coronation are appointed, and described the oddity of St Edward’s Staff, which is carried in the procession despite the fact that no-one knows what role it used to play in mediaeval rituals. Now that it’s a week since the coronation, I will draw these reflections to a close, and I hope they’ve been of some interest and/or amusement to readers.
Those invitations you can’t avoid extending
In the second essay in this series, I wrote about the attendance of Prince Harry but not his wife or children, and his swift departure for California after the ceremony. It was, I concluded, probably the least awkward path through a difficult set of circumstances. But anyone who has organised a wedding, or a birthday, or any major family gathering will know from experience, the duties of blood and manners have roles to play when you draw up an invitation list. A house party may be something to which you can just invite your friends, but once family and social obligations are engaged, you lose a great deal of freedom and have obligations to weigh up.
In the preparations for the last coronation, that of Elizabeth II, one name leapt out of the mix as problematic with a capital P: that of the new Queen’s uncle, the Duke of Windsor, formerly (and briefly) King Edward VIII. Edward had abdicated and left for a new home in France at the end of 1936, and, after an interlude between 1940 and 1945 as governor of the Bahamas, had made his home again in Paris. When his brother George VI died in February 1952, he might have hoped that some cleaning of the slate might take place between him and the rest of the royal family. Edward initially seems to have anticipated that he and his wife Wallis would be invited to the new Queen’s coronation.
In November, he visited England to see his mother, Queen Mary. She was 85, had outlived her husband, George V, and George VI was the third of her five sons to predecease her. The latest death shook her badly but she was already in failing health: what the Palace described as “recurring gastric illness” was actually lung cancer. Edward used the trip to have tea with the Queen Mother, lunch with the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh on their fifth wedding anniversary (20 November 1952) and went to Windsor Castle to meet Prince Charles, four, and Princess Anne, two. This flurry of activity raised public expectations that he was defrosting his relationship with the royal family: but it was in vain.
Whether there was ever any thought of inviting the Duke of Windsor to the coronation, he would have been invited alone, as the duchess did not share his royal status (and was hated by the Queen Mother). That alone would have made it likely that Edward would have refused to attend. Although he was an old friend of the prime minister, Winston Churchill, the latter declined to involve himself in what he regarded as a family matter. The month before Edward’s visit, the Earl Marshal, the Duke of Norfolk, had already told journalists that, while a royal duke would normally be entitled to attend the coronation, the Duchess of Windsor was not similarly entitled, and he did not expect Edward to attend.
Eventually Edward asked his lawyer, George Allen, one of the founders of legal titans Allen and Overy LLP, to approach the royal household informally to see how the land lay. The answer was clear: Sir Alan “Tommy” Lascelles, the Queen’s private secretary, told Allen that Edward’s presence would be “condemned… as a shocking breach of taste” and would cause a “distressing and discordant note”. Lascelles was no friend of the Windsors: he had been an assistant private secretary to Edward during his 325-day reign and before that had served him when he was Prince of Wales, but their initially close relationship soured as early as 1927, when, disillusioned by Edward’s selfishness, he confided to the prime minister, Stanley Baldwin, that he sometimes hoped the prince would be killed in a riding accident. Now Lascelles was in the position of influence. There would be no invitation. Edward VIII watched the coronation on television at a party at a friend’s house in Paris.
Clearly Charles III has not faced embarrassment on that scale, though perhaps considering the delicacy of the position with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex he was presented with more emotional trauma but fewer protocol issues. There seems not to have been any thought of disinviting his brother Prince Andrew, either, though the latter played no active part in the ceremony as we discussed in an earlier essay. Nevertheless, the guest list can still cause difficulties in other ways.
An unexpected furore was the case of the US president, Joe Biden. No president has ever attended a British coronation, and the White House made it clear earlier in the year that the ceremony did “not feel like an event Joe Biden will attend”. Indeed, President Biden’s presence at the late Queen’s state funeral last September was a departure in protocol terms, as a president has never attended a state funeral in the UK before. Although it was arranged that the First Lady, Dr Jill Biden, would represent the president at the coronation, some felt it was still a matter of regret that the man himself would not be there. Bob Seely, the Conservative MP for the Isle of Wight, said “It seems pretty remiss, and I’m tempted to say more fool him for not coming”. Given the precedent, however, and the fact that Biden had already visited the UK in April when he came to Northern Ireland, a return trip so soon seemed unlikely.
Another departure from previous form was the extension and acceptance of an invitation to leaders of Sinn Féin. The party’s vice president, Michelle O’Neill, and the speaker of the suspended Northern Ireland Assembly, Alex Maskey, attended the coronation as representatives of the largest group of MLAs: O’Neill would be expected to become first minister of Northern Ireland were the assembly to be functioning, but it has been dormant without the participation of the second party, the Democratic Unionists. We have come a long way since the King’s great-uncle, Earl Mountbatten of Burma, was murdered by the IRA, of which Sinn Féin is the political offshoot, in August 1979. O’Neill issued a statement in which she said that she “recognise[d] there are many people on our island for whom the coronation is a hugely important occasion” and that, although she was '“an Irish republican”, she was “committed to being a first minister for all, representing the whole community”. She did not seem to dwell on the fact that for many in Northern Ireland and in the UK more widely, the sacrifice was not being made by her in attending the ceremony, but by those extending the invitation to someone who said recently that there had been “no alternative” to the violence perpetrated by the IRA, and whose party in 1979 celebrated Mountbatten’s murder, describing the royal family as part of the colonial “war machine”. But, as I say, we have come a long way.
A curveball was thrown from an unexpected source, Dr Matthew Barrett, the partner of the Irish taoiseach, Leo Varadkar. It was revealed this weekend that Barrett had posted a series of irreverent photographs and quips on his (thankfully private) Instagram account with 354 followers, including “Holy shit I think I’m accidentally crowned king of England” from the official car as they travelled to Westminster Abbey. He posted a photograph of the order of service, highlighting the phrase “the queen touches them in turn”, and noted “Sounds like the script to a good night out, tbh”; and remarked on the presence in the procession of the Clerk of the Closet with the caption “Had this job until my early 20s”. Full details are in The Irish Times.
Let me just say now, I don’t think this is very significant. Some people might be expecting me to have a sense of humour failure, and the respected Miriam Lord, writing in The Irish Times, did note, half in jest, that the event was “serious business, so”. She did go on to say, and she does have a point, that Barrett’s ribaldry was:
Strange behaviour from someone who is there as the guest of the person representing Ireland at this important state occasion and whose presence is seen as a symbolic gesture marking this State’s improved relationship with Britain.
It’s not for me to tell the Irish how to feel about this. If some feel it makes them look bad, they shouldn’t worry too much. Both the taoiseach and Dr Barrett seem to be long-standing users of of social media, and, if I’m really honest, I think more than anything else it’s a demonstration of how much Ireland has changed that the couple’s photographs are as cheesy, everyday and slightly cringe-inducing as any heterosexual couple’s. That is true equality.
It does, perhaps, indicate what a range of threats face those in charge of protocol in the modern age. The coronation order of service did actually include a rubric asking guests not to use cameras, but I would be surprised if Dr Barrett was the only person to infringe the rules. If I had a platform so to do, I suppose I would say gently to guests and their plus-ones for major ceremonial events that circumspection should probably be their guiding principle in all matters, and that it is difficult to predict what might feel innocent or light-hearted but cause upset to others. If Barrett erred, he made himself look a little silly and unserious, and that would have been easy to avoid, but hindsight is, famously, 20:20.
The Penny is mightier than the sword
It pains me to have to steal from him but I must acknowledge Sir Chris Bryant, Labour MP for Rhondda, as the originator of the rather fine pun above; but my last reflection, which will come as no surprise to regular readers, is the dignified and dedicated performance by the Lord President of the Council, Penny Mordaunt, bearing first the Sword of State in the coronation procession and then, later in the ceremony, the Jewelled Sword of Offering.
When the date of the coronation was fixed, I told Penny—jokingly—that she should pitch to carry the Sword of State, as her predecessor as Lord President, the Marquess of Salisbury, had done at the previous coronation in 1953 had done. I joked because I assumed that, 70 years on, with an overlap between the aristocracy and the political establishment much smaller than that of the 1950s, the ceremonial roles which had gone to some leading political figures then would now be allotted to courtiers and nobles. Maybe I missed a slight smile of secret knowledge or some non-verbal cue, but it was with surprise (and delight) that I then discovered that she was, indeed, to fill Bobbety Salisbury’s role and carry the Sword of State.
Penny was the first woman to undertake this duty at a coronation; indeed, at Elizabeth II’s coronation, the Countess of Erroll was acknowledged as the rightful Lord High Constable of Scotland, but was represented in the procession by a proxy, Lord Kilmarnock, rather than participate herself. Clearly that was not going to be repeated. But I’m not sure anyone expected Penny to make quite the impression she did.
Ceremonial events sometimes present women with a sartorial challenge. Such prescribed dress as there is tends to have been designed for men, and Salisbury in 1953 had worn his uniform as a privy counsellor and his coronation robes and coronet as a marquess. But the uniform is hardly worn nowadays—the late Queen made it clear she was content to see it fall into disuse—and in any event is in male pattern, a coatee and trousers or breeches. The undress version was worn, somewhat unexpectedly, by Sir Alan Duncan at Lady Thatcher’s state funeral, and Rory Stewart, the former cabinet minister, chose the full dress version for last weekend’s coronation. But that sort of uniform, as I know from my female colleagues who served among the serjeants at arms, is challenging for a woman. Do you wear the trousers/breeches or substitute a skirt? Will the jacket fit properly and flatteringly? Will it look absurd? (One of my more dyspeptic female colleagues remarked that when women wore the knee breeches which are part of the serjeant’s dress, “there’s a danger you look like the Principal Boy”. And no-one wants that.)
But Penny is good at thinking imaginatively. She commissioned a dress from London designer Safiyaa, choosing a teal fabric with gold embroidered fern patterns, inspired by the privy counsellor’s uniform, executed by Hand and Lock, and a hat by Jane Taylor. In fact, though it was frequently described as “teal”, the dress was a colour called “Poseidon”, a nod to the naval associations of her own family—she is named after the Arethusa-class cruiser HMS Penelope—and her Portsmouth North constituency, which has several Royal Navy installations.
I had seen a few photographs of the dress during its making, and thought it would be very elegant, but I must confess I hadn’t anticipated quite what a splash Penny would make. Because last Saturday she achieved that rarity for a politician of making headlines not just within the Westminster bubble, but far, far beyond, in the sort of publications read by civilians. The media was hungry for details, details, details: Penny gave an interview to Matt Chorley of Times Radio’s Red Box podcast which will tell you most of what you want to know. But the interest came from everywhere: Elle, The Irish News, Woman and Home, Glam, HITC, Footwear News, Tatler, Inkl and, perhaps the greatest victory of all, Hello!.
There are only two points I want to make here. The first is that I think Penny played her prominent part in the coronation ceremony well and with great aplomb (as, of course, did the other great officers of state), which is alone no small feat. The Sword of State weighs eight pounds, the heaviest of the swords of the Crown Jewels, and she had trained beforehand and taken painkillers prophylactically on the day against the strain of carrying the object. But she has a feel for formality and ceremonial—though personally she is notably unstuffy—and on the day looked utterly calm and unruffled.
The second point is broader: you really can never tell what will enable a politician to leap the fence between Westminster and the real world. Penny had stood for the Conservative Party leadership last year, of course, and her bravura performances at the despatch box have increased the entertainment and popularity of Business Questions in the House of Commons every Thursday by a huge factor (but that was starting from a low base). This, however, has been of a different order of magnitude. She has, in perhaps the ultimate sign of 2020s success, become a meme.
And there we shall leave it. I think four instalments of reflections is enough for any sane man or woman, and I hope you have enjoyed them. My parting shot is that anyone who wants a light-hearted review of the coronation could, if they so wished, visit the excellent Blighty Day Fiancé podcast and listen to the coronation specials, for which I join Michelle and Robin to take the audience through the ceremony more or less as it happens. If that doesn’t thrill you to your core, I don’t know what to tell you.