As the soft drizzle in London gave way to a downpour, Charles was crowned king in Westminster Abbey, and the feeling came over many of us, if not all, that some things are the more marvellous for being a bit silly and unfathomable. No, republicans did not celebrate; they took their placards and their yellow T-shirts to Trafalgar Square, where their voices could (almost) be heard against a backdrop of marching bands and pealing bells.
But the choral singers of Britain celebrated, and the trumpet players and the embroiderers, the gilders and the girdlers, the umbrella-makers and the manufacturer of Goddard’s silver polish. Which sorcerer conjured this preposterous vision for the nation? This almost-fairytale? Practically speaking, we know his name: he is the Duke of Norfolk, a bespectacled aristocrat who looks, in mufti, like he might run an upmarket car showroom in Sheringham. But facts take you only so far. The true necromancy seemed, somehow, to come from elsewhere; a place both unknown and utterly indescribable, though I will try my best.
Queen Victoria spoke of the “disturbing oscillation” of the gold state coach, a phrase that speaks just as well to the events of Saturday. If the coronation was ludicrous, it was also magnificent; if it reduced you to laughter, it may also have made you cry. The vivid feelings began early on, not with the sight of the singer Lionel Richie sitting delightedly in his pew (you knew, in a glance, it was better for him than anything the Emmys could offer), but with the sound of the South African soprano, Pretty Yende, in a daffodil-yellow dress with shoulders the size of sails, singing Sacred Fire, a new composition by Sarah Class. Here was joy, undisguised, and it was irresistible. An organist wigged out like Rick Wakeman, the diamante lapels of Humza Yousaf’s kilt jacket sparkled, and out in the Mall, the procession began.
A drum horse called Apollo would not behave, skittering sideways determinedly. But in the diamond jubilee state coach – this one comes with both suspension and air conditioning – the queen’s hands were folded calmly in her lap. In their white ermine capes, cosy together on their quilted bench, their majesties looked like a couple of elderly polar bears on tour. Their hard-won, second-chance coupledom had never been to me more gently touching, every bit as much a symbol of 21st-century Britain as the sound of a gospel choir, or a Hindu prime minister reading from the Epistle to the Colossians (Rishi Sunak placed special emphasis on the words “being fruitful in every good work”, though one doubts they were much of a balm to a soul lately bruised by the loss of Surrey Heath and Welwyn Hatfield).
At the abbey, there was too much to take in. An embarrassment of colour and pomp and crazy jewellery. It was huge and hideous, exquisite and sacred, all at once. My dear, the outfits! As the great diarist Chips Channon said of those who attended the queen’s coronation, some of the guests were “pure Tenniel, needing only flamingoes and croquet hoops to complete the absurd picture”. Liz Truss bustled in, enclosed in orange pleats. Thérèse Coffey, the environment secretary, was wearing a union jack scarf that made her look just like one of the fans who’d slept overnight in a tent in the Mall. Katy Perry had some kind of navigational malfunction induced by the pink satellite dish she had on her head. Joanna Lumley had come as a Norland nanny.
There was a beadle and a Unicorn Pursuivant, a Chester Herald and a representative of the Knights Bachelor. Floella Benjamin, the Play School presenter on whom I grew up, carried the Rod of Equity and Mercy (otherwise known as the King’s sceptre). The Ascension Choir’s male singers wore tight white trousers, and the kind of infectious smiles only gospel music and sincere belief can induce. Bryn Terfel sang beautifully in Welsh, such formidable power in his voice, even if his folded arms did make him look like a bouncer at a Merthyr Tydfil nightclub. Princess Anne, who bears the fantastical title “Gold Stick in Waiting”, was working her Nelson/Anne Lister vibe in a hat that will, in due course, almost certainly feature in the paperback edition of her nephew Harry’s book, Spare; he was a few rows back, as predicted, and behind her red feather throughout.
Naturally, the wait for the miniature Prince Louis to misbehave – or, at any rate, to yawn – began as soon as he had taken his seat beside his parents, the Prince and Princess of Wales (the latter had, incidentally, made a total triumph of the king’s tiara ban in a headdress of silver bullion and thread-work flowers that would later have Kirsty Young rocking her makeshift BBC studio with the force of her husky admiration). But someone had cunningly thought ahead. In the middle of the service, Louis disappeared for a time, possibly to a soft play area installed in the vestry by his Middleton grandparents.
Most of all, though, there was Penny Mordaunt, the Lord President of the Council. Mordaunt will probably never be prime minister now, but she has written her way into the history books with her extraordinary performance in the abbey, an hours-long show of strength easily worthy of a Targaryen or a Stark. Somewhere along the line, she dispensed with the notion of wearing the black and gold court dress of the privy council, commissioning instead a new and utterly regal outfit for herself, courtesy of Hand & Lock.
The whole thing – save for the court shoes, which looked comfortable enough to be from the Portsmouth Marks & Spencer – was very Game of Thrones, an impression only added to by the fact that in front of her she carried the sword of state, which is 4ft long and weighs eight pounds. She never wobbled for a moment. Beneath her teal wool and embroidered ferns, Mordaunt clearly has a core of iron, and one wonders all over again why she did not win the celebrity swimming show, Splash! (though she really knows how to make one). No wonder the Archbishop of Canterbury sounded so tremulous, and the Archbishop of York, so unctuous.
None of this, though, could detract from the heart of the ceremony; its symbolism and its glory had even the arch cynics of social media straining for superlatives. People talk, pejoratively, of soggy Anglicanism. But on Saturday, its damp embrace was just the thing, and not only because of the weather. Only a stone-hearted person could fail to have been moved by the multifaith parts of the service, and if you felt nothing when the choir sang Handel’s Zadok the Priest at the king’s anointment, you are either an algorithm or half dead.
I confess to tearfulness when Charles, now in a plain linen shirt, knelt before the altar; and later on, as he put his arms into his gold robe, there was something so tender in the manner of the churchmen who dressed him. The king’s studied helplessness was peculiarly moving; in that moment, he had an invalid quality, a feeling that he was moving beyond something – though what that something might be, precisely, I cannot say. His face was almost plangent. He left the smiles to Camilla, and in so doing, made the moment when his son kissed him a fully sentimental one, his quiet “Thank you, William” his only real display of emotion. By now, I think I was – perhaps we were all – a bit agog. I looked up, and saw my neighbour across the street open the door to a man from Deliveroo, and it was the strangest thing. How could these two events be happening at once?
But this is how it works, of course. The archbishop spoke of the king being “set apart” for the service of his people, and the coronation makes this manifest. You can feel it happening. Already, we think of him differently; he used to be plain Charles, a vessel for moaning and waiting and a certain kind of purposelessness. Henceforth, however, we may ourselves be saying, as we did with the queen before him, that while we are not royalists or anything like it, we have time for the king.
He’s in context now. The past and the future, history woven through him. Even the most ardent republican must find it astonishing, in its way, that the coronation chair, commissioned by Edward I, has been the centrepiece of this ceremony for 700 years; that the St Edward’s crown was made for Charles II; that the imperial state crown (the second that the king wore) contains a ruby that Henry V is supposed to have worn at Agincourt.
After the abbey, there was a procession a mile long. Four thousand members of the armed forces. Princess Anne on horseback. Charles and Camilla in their golden pumpkin. Precision that was unbelievable in a country where nothing works. Finally, a military salute in the grounds of Buckingham Palace. Only at this point, all those uniforms ranged before him on the green baize of the lawn like so many toy soldiers, did the king smile, though this was preceded by a noticeable sigh, whether of awe, satisfaction, or relief, who knows.
I would say that the spell – a bewitchment I’ve doubtless failed fully to capture – had broken by the time the family appeared, waxwork-like on the balcony, their majesties unable to enjoy the flypast in crowns that strained their necks and would not let them look up. But it hardly mattered. There had been no hitches. The crowd below was sufficiently swollen. The mood, beneath the clouds, was moistly buoyant. I thought back to the abbey, already a memory: a thing to be framed and kept, like a photograph. I found that I couldn’t mind those long hours. I had seen Floella Benjamin and, as the anthem goes, I was glad.
