On May 12, 1937, King Charles' grandfather, GeorgeV, was crowned King of Britain. Here's a glimpse into the Times of London special Coronation edition, May 20, 1937:
His Coronation day in London was the setting for my third novel, Smoke, published in 2014. Here's a description, from an American perspective, of what was happening on the streets of London that day, Coronation Day, May 12, 1937.
Philip was hurrying to finish a business report. As soon as the monthly was done, he would hit the street hoping to find a suitable place in the crowd to get a glimpse of the new King of England, whose crowning would be today.
For the love of a woman can change the course of the world. As Helen's face had launched a thousand Greek ships, so the affections of an American divorcée had turned the tide of royal authority from one brother to another. From one duke to another. Made ostensibly of sterner, though stammering, stuff than his older liege, Albert--soon to be called George VI--would, in only a few short hours ascend those few hallowed steps in Westminster to sit upon the throne of Edward, James, Henry and all those other regents who had ever commanded the armies or fleets of British empire.
The American, Philip Morrow, whose typewriter rang its final return as he completed his report, anticipated the mounting pageantry with distant, though wondrous, curiosity. He stood up, walked over to the open window, and surveyed the stream of English yoredom migrating south on Tottenham Court Road toward Trafalgar and beyond where the royal procession would pass in a few hours. His cigarette had died; he flipped its butt in the ever-present ashtray on the window sill.
The people of England were expectant, exultant. No mean Mr. Mustard here. No, they were ready to receive a new king, now that the whole affair of Edward's abdication had resolved itself into the ashtray of history. And all the more so, since the role of the regents was now largely ceremonial, having little effectual responsibility except to maintain that proverbial stiff upper lip with a vigilant eye upon the horizon where an eternal sun was perpetually setting, but never, of course, on the British Empire. God save the King, but it would be Mr. Baldwin, or Mr. Chamberlain, Mr. Churchill, or some such privileged commoner who would ultimately compel English hearts and guts to bear sacrificial defense of their storied shores.
Only a hundred and fifty-odd years ago, Philip's yankee forebears had fired the shot so-dubbed “shot heard ‘round the world.” Upstart revolutionists in that hotbed of rebellion, Massachusetts, had sparked a powder keg of free-thinking independence that had since set the whole of civilization ablaze with yearnings for liberty. But not here, no, not here in the realm, in the Albion of old. No, the very Magna Carta that had implanted, in former times, plucky zeal in the hearts of Englishmen--the very document--languished in a glass case at the British Library just a few miles from here. Who knew? These limeys were streaming like lemmings to a Dover cliff, like vassals to a gilt coronation, like white on rice. How many of them, this very hour, paraded right by the sacrosanct text unaware of the incendiary ideas embalmed within, in inky arcanity? How many?
For the 2023 version of Coronation, turn on the telly or the tube or whatever network floats your boat, this Saturday, May 6, 2023.
We the Yanks wish the King well, and wish upon him a long reign, perhaps even as long as his mother's was. As God Saves the King, his reign will not end as Charles' I did in 1649. Providentially, Charles III reign will, we hope span even longer than Charles II's did, from 1649-1651 and then 1660-1685, as long as some roundhead trumpian troublemaker doesn't come along blowing his treason horn.
And of course we are hoping Charles and Camilla can make amends with Harry and Meghan.
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