Sunday Drive: Handel, Zadok the Priest

This stirring anthem is one of four anthems written by Handel for the coronation of King George II in 1727, and has been played at every British coronation since. 

 

The lyrics are based on the Biblical account of King Solomon's anointing, as described at I Kings 1:34-35: 

Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet 

Anointed Solomon king. 

And all the people rejoiced and said:

God save the King! Long live the King! 

God save the King! May the King live for ever! 

Amen. Hallelujah!

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The Coronation of King Charles III and Queen Camilla

Here's an assortment of live-stream coverage of the Coronation at Westminster Abbey, where the service begins at 11 a.m., London time (6 a. m. in New York, 5 a.m. in Texas).  Take your pick of these British broadcasters - avoid the goofball American news channels like the plague.

The Official Website of the royal family offers a schedule of events and much information on all aspects of the procession, the music, and the service here.

Sky News: 

 

 The BBC:

 

 Reuters (no commentary):

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Behind the Scenes: His Majesty's Forces

The British Monarch is Commander-in-Chief of all the military forces of the nation; soldiers, sailors, and airmen all swear allegiance to the Sovereign, his heirs and successors according to law.  As the following short videos show, they take their oath quite seriously and serve the Sovereign proudly, usually with a crown appearing on some part of the uniform.

My fellow Americans should understand - and I have it on good authority - that to the British, military and civilian alike, the King is a living symbol of their country, representing the dignity, unity, and authority of the state; their loyal feelings for the monarchy are akin to what we feel for the flag and the Constitution all wrapped up in one person.  (Britain has no written constitution.)  

But the monarchy was long ago tamed and stripped of any substantial powers (see English Bill of Rights).  Parliament is in fact the supreme power in the land, and since 1689 has asserted its right to make all the laws and even choose who will be king or queen.  So for quite a long time now, British monarchs have reigned, but not ruled.  The King as Head of State is expected to be the impartial representative of the whole nation, above all party politics.  The late Queen Elizabeth II was a shining example of that, as most British monarchs have been for the last two centuries.

His Majesty's Forces in particular are proud to be soldiers of the King, and thus servants of the nation whom he represents and reigns over.  Here are a few examples of how HM Forces are preparing to put on a typically British good show for the Coronation.

Royal Navy officers drill with swords in hand.

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The Coronation in Focus: Anointing, Crowning, Enthroning

A final sequence of excellent videos by Dr. Allan Barton on the most solemn and significant parts of the coronation service. 

 

A reminder: the coronation service begins at 11 a.m. tomorrow (6 a.m. New York time, 5 a.m. Texas time) in Westminster Abbey. I will post a live feed in the Blue Truck, but of course you can find several of those from different broadcasters on YouTube.

The Order of Service can be downloaded from the Church of England website here.

Bonus:  In case you are wondering, here is a list of all British sovereigns since the last time we had a king to acclaim here in what became the United States, together with the dates of their reigns.

George III        1760 - 1820, succeeded by his son,

George IV        1820 - 1830, succeeded by his brother,

William IV       1830 - 1837, succeeded by his niece,

Victoria            1837 - 1901, succeeded by her son,

Edward VII      1901 - 1910, succeeded by his son,

George V         1910 - 1936, succeeded by his son,

Edward VIII    1936 (abdicated), succeeded by his brother,

George VI       1936 - 1952, succeeded by his daughter,

Elizabeth II     1952 - 2022, succeeded by her son,

Charles III       Whom God preserve.

For more details, see the family tree of the British royal family.

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The Coronation in Focus: Crowns, Robes, and Thrones

More fascinating information about the coronation from English historian Dr. Allan Barton.

 

The Church of England has published the Order of Service as a PDF you can download here. 

Westminster Abbey has links to more details about the service and its setting here.

And many more links about all things royal at the Official Site of the royal family.

I do pray everything goes well and safely and happily on the day.

God Save the King.

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The Coronation - Then and Now

Below are films of the late Queen's coronation in 1952, a splendid, deeply moving occasion that will be repeated - with some updating - this coming Saturday, May 6th, for her son and successor, King Charles III, and his consort, Queen Camilla.  

But first, if you are planning to watch the ceremony live (look on YouTube for the live streams from the BBC, ITV, or Sky News - NOT the clueless American networks with their mindless laugh-a-minute drivel), here is an abbreviated timeline of the day: 

9 a.m., London (= 4 a.m. in New York, 3 a.m. in Texas): Congregation seated in Westminster Abbey 

10 a.m., London: VIP arrivals at the Abbey (Foreign royalty, presidents, British royal family, etc.) 

10:20 a.m., London: King and Queen's procession leaves Buckingham Palace 

11 a.m., London: Coronation service begins 

1 p.m., London: King and Queen's procession returns to Buckingham Palace by a longer route 

2:15 p.m., London: King and Queen appear on the palace balcony for a fly-past by the Royal Air Force

Your Head Trucker fondly remembers watching many other royal events, waking before dawn and putting on a kettle of tea:  the wedding of Charles and Diana was the most lovely and festive - but alas, not every fairy-tale romance ends happily, as kings and commoners all know.

oooOooo

And now some films of past coronations, which may be of interest to compare with this year's version; across a thousand years, the essentials of this Christian ceremony have remained the same, though the details have often varied. 

This abridged color film of the 1952 coronation is beautifully narrated by Sir Laurence Olivier, and was shown in movie theaters around the world:

   

Or if you prefer, here is the central portion of the BBC's eight-hour live coverage from 1952, There was no such thing as color TV then, but the sound is wonderfully clear and the picture sharp:

 

BONUS: Color film clips of the 1937 coronation of the late Queen's father, King George VI, and Queen Elizabeth, later known as the Queen Mother during her daughter's reign.  (Outdoor scenes only; there was no filming inside the Abbey.)  The first one begins with a fine summing-up of why the coronation matters.

 

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The Coronation in Focus: The Imperial State Crown

English historian Dr. Allan Barton explains the history and design of the Imperial State Crown:

Your Head Trucker was fortunate enough to see this magnificent crown close up in the Tower of London on my one trip to Britain in the 1970s.  No photograph conveys the impression it makes, being completely encrusted with diamonds - a breathtaking sight.

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The Coronation in Focus: St. Edward's Crown

Two very informative videos by English historian Dr. Allan Barton:

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A Guide to the Coronation

English historian Dr. Allan Barton has a video channel on YouTube,  entitled The Antiquary.  He has created some excellent videos explaining various aspects of the coronation ceremony, past and present, and I'll be posting more of those in the coming days.

But my fellow Americans, let us understand one thing from the outset:  there is no such word as coronated.  

However, the King will be crowned at his coronation on May 6th.  You got that?

It should also be understood that the coronation is a deeply serious and solemn religious service:  the monarch is anointed and consecrated, and in turn dedicates his life to the service of his people.  It bears no resemblance to the hoopla attendant on, say, crowning a Miss America or other temporary celebrity. 

King Charles will be the 40th monarch since William the Conqueror to be crowned in Westminster Abbey - a line of continuity reaching back a thousand years.  There is nothing wrong with that; we could use a little more continuity and dignity over here, in my view.

Here is a snippet from a recent BBC documentary with some scenes of the late beloved Queen's coronation in 1953, and her thoughts on what it meant.

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Coronation Invitation

 The invitations for the Coronation are splendid:

Click to enlarge.

According to Buckingham Palace:

The invitation for the Coronation has been designed by Andrew Jamieson, a heraldic artist and manuscript illuminator whose work is inspired by the chivalric themes of Arthurian legend. Mr Jamieson is a Brother of the Art Workers’ Guild, of which The King is an Honorary Member.

The original artwork for the invitation was hand-painted in watercolour and gouache, and the design will be reproduced and printed on recycled card, with gold foil detailing. Central to the design is the motif of the Green Man, an ancient figure from British folklore, symbolic of spring and rebirth, to celebrate the new reign. The shape of the Green Man, crowned in natural foliage, is formed of leaves of oak, ivy and hawthorn, and the emblematic flowers of the United Kingdom. 

As a help to my fellow Americans, those emblematic flowers are the Tudor rose for England, the thistle for Scotland, the shamrock for (Northern) Ireland, and the daffodil for Wales - though for some strange reason, the Welsh much prefer the humble, inartistic leek.  Go figure.

More than 2,000 invited guests will attend the Coronation service on May 6 in Westminster Abbey.

Bonus:  Your Head Trucker's spies - who are everywhere - have found evidence that the King himself as a wee lad of 4-and-a-half received an invitation to his royal mama's Coronation in 1953 - and isn't it marvelous:

Click to enlarge.

Prince Charles at the 1953 Coronation, seated between his grandmama
and Aunt Margaret.

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The Coronation, 1953

At this time in 1953, Winston Churchill was Prime Minister of England, and over here President Dwight Eisenhower was still in the early months of his first term of office, and "Mamie pink," the First Lady's favorite color, was a trending fashion. I Love Lucy was just concluding its second season; Lucy's competitors Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, and Imogene Coca were household names. Steam locomotives were still to be seen pulling passenger and freight trains all across the U.S.A., though brightly-painted diesels had already crowded them out on some routes. To get from New York to Los Angeles, you could take the 20th Century Limited to Chicago in 16 hours overnight, rocked to sleep in a snug, air-conditioned Pullman bedroom (think of the famous scenes in North by Northwest with Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint); and then after a leisurely 12-hour layover in Chicago, during which you could enjoy the city's finest offerings in the way of shopping, dining, and perhaps taking in a museum or a movie, the Super Chief would carry you on to the Golden State in just 39 3/4 hours; in other words, a civilized traveler who left New York on Friday afternoon at 5 p.m. would arrive in L.A. at 8:30 on Monday morning. Plenty of millionaires and movie stars, as well as ordinary folks, still traveled that way in 1953.

But for those in a real hurry, the quickest way to get from New York to Los Angeles was a nine-hour non-stop flight aboard an elegant, four-propellered Lockheed Constellation (price: $158.25 one way, or $1360 in today's dollars; plus 10% federal transportation tax). It took twelve hours for a Connie to jump the Atlantic and wing you to London, with a stop in Newfoundland or Ireland en route. Cunard's magnificent ships, the Queen Mary and the Queen Elizabeth, still plied the North Atlantic in tandem like clockwork, with one arriving and departing New York harbor every week, along with the liners of many other steamship companies. More people still crossed the Atlantic by ship than by plane. And the SS United States, pride of this nation since winning the Blue Riband a year before, was likewise shuttling back and forth between England and America at 32 knots, or 37 mph for you landlubbers - the fastest thing afloat. There were no spacecraft, no astronauts, and no NASA. Telephones were black and identical, had dials, not pushbuttons, weighed about five pounds, and were all of them wired securely to the wall. None of them took photographs. There were no color televisions, microwave ovens, or home computers. Even rock'n'roll was unknown: Elvis had yet to cut his first demo record. And nobody had ever heard of McDonalds.

It was a very different world, but one thing has remained constant since then, amidst all the flux of change: sixty years ago today, Queen Elizabeth II was crowned in Westminster Abbey, the first major public occasion to be televised nationwide in Britain, with film footage delivered across the oceans by military jet planes to be seen on TV screens throughout much of the world.  Here's a behind-the-scenes documentary produced by the BBC that includes stunning color footage of the Queen, the pageantry and processions, and the ceremony itself - which, as the commentator says, and I think rightly, was of a grandeur and magnificence that will never be seen again.



William Shawcross, official biographer of the late Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, writing in The Telegraph:

As the country has become more diverse and restless, the only real focus of unity today is the monarchy. And we saw in both the Golden and Diamond Jubilees how much people value that. The union is mystical and, I would say, that it is vital.

The paradox – indeed, the genius of constitutional monarchy – is obvious in the Coronation ceremony. The Queen is anointed in the presence of God, as she truly believed; she was crowned and she sat in the chair in which so many of her forebears had sat to be crowned. Lords temporal and spiritual paid homage to her. But at the same time, she swore oaths to preserve the laws of her lands.

Put another way, she was God’s anointed that day but she swore to God to obey the elected representatives of her people.

This system of government may seem archaic to those who consider themselves progressive, but it has worked remarkably well for centuries.

Never better, perhaps, than under this monarch. And that is at least in part because she is utterly true to everything she experienced at her Coronation.

At Christmas 2000, she explained: “For me, the teachings of Christ and my own personal accountability before God provide a framework in which I try to live my life.”

That Christian framework has enabled her to keep every one of the vows she made on that wet summer’s day 60 years ago.