The Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II

CEREMONIAL FANFARE

London, May 1953.

CHURCH BELL CHIMES

Dr Geoffrey Fisher, The Archbishop of Canterbury,

crowns Lavinia, Duchess of Norfolk.

These are the final rehearsals

for the greatest public ceremony of the 20th century,

the coronation of Queen Elizabeth the Second.

On June 2nd 1953, a 900-year-old rite was enacted

not only in front of the traditional audience

of the great and the good...

..but for the first time, live, in front of 20 million people

clustered round very small television screens.

The pageantry was a farewell to the hardship

that followed on from the Second World War.

With a young Queen on the throne

it seemed that things could only get better.

CELEBRATORY MUSIC

Yet it might so easily have been chaotic.

In just 16 months, the views of forceful personalities

from die-hard traditionalists

to forward-thinking innovators

had to be reconciled.

It's a story of meticulous planning, last minute nerves,

and an ancient ceremony performed to perfection,

the like of which will never be seen again.

The 15th of February 1952...

..the funeral of George VI.

The King had died in his sleep at the age of 56

in the early hours of the 6th of February

at Sandringham House, his home in Norfolk.

His daughter Elizabeth had been told of his death

while she was in Kenya with her husband Philip,

the Duke of Edinburgh,

on a tour of British overseas possessions.

The Empire had not yet been entirely dismantled.

She was quickly escorted home to take up her new responsibilities.

On the runway in London to greet her were the Prime Minister,

Winston Churchill, and members of the Privy Council.

Five days later, after paying their respects to the King,

lying in state in Westminster Hall,

Winston Churchill and his Cabinet met to discuss a date

for the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.

Planning a coronation takes an enormous amount of time

and it could have been done at a rush

but the likelihood of hitting high summer

and doing it in a way that it delivered the benefit of effect

for the whole of Britain in that it was the BEST showcase

you could possibly have, that would be tough, so the decision was taken

not least because it would provide more time in June 1953

but also because it suited the Prime Minister Winston Churchill,

who sought to gain the benefit of the coronation

in his coming need to go to the electorate.

June would have been chosen

because it's the period of the social season in London

which would kick off with the Preview of the Royal Academy,

go on to Ascot and, and all that sort of stuff,

Henley and the boat race

will all be seen part of the London social season.

Balls at the Palace, debutantes being presented,

all of that world was reanimated,

still going on in 1953, so it would fit in with that.

At the end of April '52 the date of the Coronation was announced

to the media, as were the members of the Coronation Commission

who would oversee its planning.

The Duke of Edinburgh, young, energetic,

but still coming to terms with the shift in the balance of power

within his marriage, was appointed its Chairman.

I think there was a strong feeling that he needed a role,

he was thought of as a hands-on chap

that would bring a voice of practicality

and he is the one who said something more connected

with the modern world should be introduced,

I mean, he was one of the modernists.

How much he actually did is of course in a sense

slightly questionable, he said he chaired one or two meetings

but the evidence doesn't suggest

that he had a huge impact on the coronation,

although of course I'm sure that if there was any nonsense going on

he was very quick to see a direct line through it.

The man in charge of all the day to day planning was

the Earl Marshal, Bernard Marmaduke Fitzalan-Howard, Duke of Norfolk.

His home was Arundel Castle.

A Norfolk had been at the right-hand of King Richard III

at his Coronation in 1483.

By the 17th century it had become an hereditary appointment.

Some Earl Marshals had been absolutely useless,

but not Duke Bernard.

The fact is, he'd already organised the coronation of George VI

some 16 years before.

He was only a young man, he was only 29 at the time,

but he had got this vast experience behind him.

He was rigid in the way that he expected everything to be done

to the highest possible standard

and he just was the perfect Norfolk to be running that role.

At the same hour

the street lining of the route to the Abbey

will have been completed.

He knew what it took to stage a Coronation.

Early on he told his staff,

"Solve the problem of what THEY call the toilets

"and you will have made a very good start indeed."

He was a kind of Duke out of central casting really, wasn't he?

He was exactly a rather large person and the sort of cartoon person

one associates with Osbert Lancaster.

The Ministry of Works gave the Duke 14 Belgrave Square

as his headquarters.

Bernard Norfolk loved precedent, he loved every detail of it

and he was conscious,

perhaps far more than any of the Royalties had ever been,

that it mattered whether a Marquis was here or a Duke was there

or an Earl's daughter was sitting in the right place

in the high balcony over here and who should be over there,

whether the Ambassadors were in the right order,

ALL of that mattered to him tremendously.

The Duke hosted regular press conferences,

though he sometimes seemed to regard the very notion

of the information society as an impertinence.

I don't want you to ask me all the details

of this that and the other because they haven't been arranged

and I've told you after all what you really want to know.

On the south bank of the Thames at Lambeth Palace,

Dr Geoffrey Fisher the Archbishop of Canterbury,

began to address the complex liturgy for the Coronation.

A few people understand the Coronation ceremony, your Grace.

Could you explain it to us?

The ceremony is so rich in meaning that no brief description

can do justice to it, but in outline it's quite simple,

it is at once a profound religious and national occasion,

the consecration and the Coronation of a Queen.

For Dr Fisher, it would also be a handsome opportunity

to emphasise the centrality of the Church of England

in British public life.

'I present unto you King George, your undoubted King,

'wherefore all you who are come this day to do your homage and service,

'are you willing to do the same?'

As an 11-year-old, in May 1937

Princess Elizabeth had been entranced

by the spectacle of her father's Coronation.

'I thought it all very, very wonderful

'and I expect the Abbey did too.

'The arches and beams at the top were covered with

'a sort of haze of wonder as Papa was crowned,

'at least I thought so.'

She recorded how lovely the music had been,

and she was so enchanted she also noted that her granny, Queen Mary,

claimed not to remember much about her own coronation.

Princess Elizabeth thought that the memory would have lingered for ever.

15 years later, for the woman now Queen Elizabeth,

her father's Coronation remained an inspiration.

The ceremony would always be first and foremost a religious one.

Now, monarchs have been crowned in Britain since 973

and she was bought up to understand that

and she would have been guided into all of that

by the Dean of Westminster at the time.

She would have wanted to do well.

Gosh, it must have been such a stress on her

to have to, at the age of 26, young woman, go through this event,

the pressure must have been immense.

Nor was she the only one to feel pressured.

The ambition of the Government was to match the splendour

of the 1937 Coronation, yet costs had risen dramatically.

The government set aside £1.5 million

nearly 21 million in today's money,

for ceremonial on broadly the same scale as 1937.

In charge of the State's spending was David Eccles,

Churchill's Minister of Works.

Eccles described himself as "the Earl Marshal's Handyman."

'My job is to build a theatre inside Westminster Abbey,

'to provide seating and standing room,

'decorations along the path of the processional route

'and to arrange flowers, floodlighting, fireworks

'and other expressions of public rejoicing.'

For the last five Coronations,

a temporary Annexe had been constructed

at the West End of the Abbey where processions could form

out of sight of the guests.

These previous annexes had been designed to blend in

with the gothic west front of the Abbey.

David Eccles turned his back on pseudo-Gothic.

'There will be nothing pseudo about this Coronation.'

He was very, very keen on all the facilities being well designed

and organised for the public.

He looked to doing it with style and in a way which brought out

the strengths of British art and design.

Well, I knew David Eccles.

The nickname for him was Smartyboots and later Speckles.

There was a flash of the car salesman about David Eccles,

he was determined to get contemporary design in,

I don't know, quite a bit of the Festival of Britain

must have rubbed off on him, so the Annexe,

instead of being like a piece of stage scenery

from an Edwardian Shakespeare play

became instead this softened Scandinavian modernism

and of course he made that famous remark,

"How could you go wrong with such a leading lady?"

Well, that went down like a ton of bricks from Buckingham Palace

for a start.

'Now look at the entrance here.

'That's where the Queen is going to alight from her golden coach.

'She will pass up these steps

'and the roof over the entrance is made of a transparent material

'so that the cameramen shooting from each side get a very good view.'

David Eccles was well aware that the world was changing

and that the media was playing an ever-increasing role

in both stimulating and fulfilling

the public's interest in Royalty and its rituals.

BBC Radio had begun planning its coverage of the Coronation

soon after the death of George VI.

The relatively new Television Outside Broadcast Department

was also hatching plans.

'The first outside broadcast was at the coronation procession

'on the 12th of May 1937,

'and here is a picture from our library

'showing the outside broadcast cameras at Apsley Gate

'as the Royal Coach passes by.'

In 1937, three outside broadcast cameras had recorded

only the procession after the crowning of the King.

'Those eight magnificent greys

'drawing on that almost unbelievable State Coach

'with Their Majesties the King and Queen.'

In '53, the BBC hoped to televise

the WHOLE of the Queen's Coronation live.

We knew that the Coronation would offer

a wonderful opportunity for live television.

The question was, would its cameras be allowed inside Westminster Abbey?

'One last glimpse of the happy, excited crowd,

'raining though it may be,

'we end our adventure televising the Coronation procession.'

With so much to plan, the BBC put in a request to televise

both the service and the processions a whole year ahead.

The Coronation Joint Committee discussed the Corporation's proposal

at St James's Palace on the 7th July 1952.

"The Dean of Westminster felt it would add enormously

"to the strain on the Queen if Her Majesty knew

"that she was being closely watched by so great a number of persons."

The High Commissioner of New Zealand, Frederick Doidge,

said he considered television "was an immature art."

The Archbishop of Canterbury thought,

"It was unfair to expose the Queen and others

"to this searching method of photography,

"without any chance of correcting an error."

So there was huge resistance

and the Cabinet initially, along with the Coronation Committee

and the Joint Executive Committee, rejected it as unlikely to be worthy

and certainly too much pressure on the Queen, she was too young,

she'd got too much to do, she didn't need that as well.

Sir Jock Colville, the Prime Minister's Private Secretary,

passed on to Churchill the conclusions of the key meeting,

noting in a bracket that the Queen "does not herself want television."

BELLS CHIME

But no final decision would be announced until October.

The logistics of mounting an outside broadcast were hugely complex

and the days were slipping by.

Peter Dimmock, who hoped to direct the cameras in the Abbey,

could only wait for the verdict.

This is what we wanted to do and we were in absolute agony.

Waiting and waiting and waiting and still we got no answer...

It was anybody's guess which way the decision would go.

By late summer preparations were picking up pace.

The Ministry of Works completed a scale model of the route,

for some now unfathomable purpose.

In Braintree, Essex, Harry Spinks and Lily Lee

began weaving the Coronation robes.

The Queen would be helped into a succession of sacramental garments

at her crowning.

Each had a symbolic meaning, and their designs were set in stone.

But the dress she would wear to the Abbey could be of her choosing.

The man she went to was a family favourite, Norman Hartnell.

One of Hartnell's talents was an eye for colour.

He understood how colour suited the individual woman

in terms of the colouring of her hair, her skin,

and also her personality.

And he also understood how colour worked in the public arena,

so that the Royal women always wore pastel colours,

plain colours, in a crowd.

At Hartnell's Bruton Street HQ, the windows were papered over

and work conducted in utmost secrecy.

The Queen never came to the salon for fittings

and Mr Hartnell would always go to Buckingham Palace

armed with sketches to show her, a selection of designs,

and she would choose from those, and he took a selection of designs

for the Coronation gown, eight or nine in fact designs,

for her to choose from.

A slimly fitting design was rejected.

With the Coronation dress the Queen took a very keen interest

in reflecting the Commonwealth, with all the different symbols

of the various different Commonwealth countries

of which she was Queen.

The Coronation gown is extremely important to the Queen

who has a reputation for not being terribly interested in fashion

and in what she wears,

but I understand from several members of Hartnell's staff,

who've helped to dress her over the years

that in fact the Coronation gown has a very special place in her heart.

On the 20th of October, the BBC heard that it wouldn't be allowed

to televise the Coronation service.

There were howls of outrage

and the press immediately began a campaign to get the ban lifted.

Sir Alexander Cadogan,

the Chairman of the BBC noted in his diary on October 21:

"I think we can leave it to an enraged public opinion

"to bring pressure on the Government.

"They can do the job much better than I can."

There was a ferocious newspaper campaign,

it was led by the Beaverbrook press,

pretty much all the papers, apart from The Times,

shared in the campaign.

The cabinet realised that there was public opinion

driven by the media, which was very powerful then, as it always is,

at saying, you know, this needs to be reviewed,

this decision not to allow the public in with their cameras,

which could be done,

was stuffed-shirt behaviour and it needs to be overcome.

Agony continued and it was several days afterwards that suddenly

the wonderful news came,

yes, we would be allowed to televise it.

The television has been arranged

and approved by the Queen,

and of course the anointing and the communion,

with one or two prayers, will not be televised.

I would like to emphasise that

there will not be what television people are probably getting used to,

the ordinary close-up.

That will not be there.

It's quite difficult to know

whether the Queen herself changed her mind.

A lot of people would have lobbied,

certainly the decision was presented as the Queen's

and who am I to second guess that.

A lot of television sets would be sold as a result of the U-turn.

On the 28th of October, Major Frank Markham, the MP for Buckingham,

asked in the Commons who would be dealing with the

"entirely objectionable Coronation advertisements"

-for such items as

-"ladies undies with the Union Jack at the rear."

Churchill instructed the Council of Industrial Design

to advise on what constituted a "tasteful" souvenir.

The committee devised three private categories,

good,

bad

and horrible.

# She's the Queen of everyone's heart

# No matter wherever she goes

# She's the Queen of everyone's heart

# This beautiful young English rose... #

By the end of November, with six months to go,

excitement was building amongst Britain's ruling class

about the seating arrangements for the Coronation.

Representatives of the Empire, the Commonwealth, the Royal Family,

their relations, Bishops, MPs, they all wanted to be there.

Peers and Peeresses, called to the Abbey by ancient custom,

formed a sizeable phalanx.

'People are prattling of the Coronation already,

'of whom will and will not be summoned,

'of their robes and places and arrangements,'

..wrote the American-born MP and compulsive gossip Chips Channon.

'Winnie Portarlington announced at luncheon

'that she has harness but no coach.

'Circe Londonderry has a coach but no horses.

'Mollie Buccleuch has no postillions but five tiaras.

'People are obsessed by their Coronation prerogatives.'

Of course there wasn't enough room in the Abbey for everybody

who felt or had a right to be there, particularly the peers,

there was a discussion as to whether there should be a ballot and so on.

And one member of the peerage was concerned that

he had been divorced and therefore he wasn't sure

whether he'd be allowed into the Coronation

and the Earl Marshall said to him, "This is a coronation, not Ascot."

It was felt that enough time had passed

for the Duke of Edinburgh's German brothers-in-law

who'd been an embarrassment during the War, to be invited.

On the other hand, the Palace was adamant that her uncle,

the Duke of Windsor, the ex-King Edward VIII,

should not be asked.

His Abdication was a wound that hadn't yet healed.

After a little prodding, the Duke announced to the press

on the 16th December that he and his wife Wallis would not be attending.

'How did you celebrate the New Year, I wonder?

'Some people like to celebrate it robustly in cheerful crowds.

'Yes, mankind remains obstinately optimistic

'and the New Year is still regarded as the subject for rejoicing,

'for music, dancing and the popping of balloons.'

1953 was really the year where the economic indicators changed

and Britain really decisively moved out of that very difficult period

of immediate post-war austerity and moved towards, as it were,

the sunlit uplands of prosperity and affluence and so on.

'At my Coronation next June, I shall dedicate myself anew

'to your service, but I want to ask you all,

'whatever your religion may be, to pray for me on that day,

'to pray that God may give me wisdom and strength

'to carry out the solemn promises I shall be making,

'and that I may faithfully serve Him and you all the days of my life.'

Winston Churchill's Tory government was determined to eclipse

Labour's Festival of Britain of 1951,

a successful combination of the popular and the futuristic,

with something more hierarchical and historically-based.

With five months to go to the Coronation,

the transformation of London now started in earnest.

'Eros himself is being very thoroughly groomed at Kennington,

'the feathers of his wings have been having a trim and shampoo,

'the bow with which he aims at every passer-by has been polished,

'expert chiropodists have tended to his poor feet

and there's a special kind of massage for his leg muscles

'because he does an awful lot of standing, after all.

His cup gets the once over, and to finish off the job

'of making him look his very best for the Coronation, a facial.

'Eros will be smart.'

Construction work had begun in the nave of Westminster Abbey

in December.

From January, the whole building was closed to the public.

The seating capacity needed to be increased from 2,100

to nearer 7,500.

First, the stone floor was covered in felt and floorboards laid on top.

Next, the monuments, the choir stalls,

and the organ were wrapped up and boxed in.

A railway line was laid from the west door

to the foot of the altar steps

with spur lines into the transepts north and south

so that hundreds of tonnes of scaffolding and wood

could be imported.

At Templeton's mills in Glasgow,

work began on the chenille Axminster carpet for the nave.

At 118 feet long and 17 feet wide,

it was one of the largest single items to be made for the Coronation,

and, at £18,000, one of the most costly.

Banks of seating were built on either side of the main body

of the Abbey, raked steeply up to just beneath the Gothic arches,

and three tiers of seats were built in the transepts

for the peers, peeresses, and Members of Parliament.

At the crossing, the floor was raised to the level of the pavement

in front of the high altar.

This area was known as the Coronation theatre.

Here the dais was erected, on which was placed the Queen's Throne.

For those sitting in the nave, 5,701 stools were constructed.

The specifications were precise,

the padding had to be 12% horse mane hair,

12% cow tail hair,

and 76% North American grey winter hog.

The luxury of the padding, compensation perhaps for the fact

that guests in the nave would have next to no view of the ceremony

beyond the organ screen.

Though access to the Abbey had been agreed,

the Archbishop of Canterbury and The Dean of Westminster

were still concerned about just how close

the cameras would be to the Queen.

Secretly, without anyone knowing, even the press didn't get hold of it

we took an Outside Broadcast Unit

and one camera to Westminster Abbey.

I arranged for a meeting with the Earl Marshall,

the Archbishop, the Palace, the Ministry of Works were there

and we should them on a little Pye monitor

what the television picture of the altar area would look like.

And I was lucky enough that none of them

seemed to know a great deal about lenses so I put in a two inch,

the widest lens we had and so everything looked a long way away

and so they all looked and muttered and said yes and went away.

From that day on,

prejudice against the televising of the ceremony subsided.

In January, construction had begun

on the stands that would line the Mall

from Admiralty Arch to Buckingham Palace.

David Eccles, the Minister of Works,

ordered them to be assembled gradually

so as not to divert manpower

from the crucial task of rebuilding homes.

All the materials were to be recyclable too.

He was caught up at the same time

with the promise to build 300,000 houses,

so my father would have been very, very conscious of

if the timber was good timber, well we better look after it

and find another use for it.

When the stands were finally ready, at the end of March,

soldiers were brought in to test whether they'd hold up

beneath an excited crowd.

'And here seen leaving Westminster Abbey early in the morning

'the first Coronation procession rehearsal.

'Attended by Guardsmen and Household Cavalry,

'the State Landau drawn by Windsor Greys

'proceeded along the return route.'

What was being worked out here,

was how long the processions were likely to take,

and which traffic islands would need to be removed.

20,000 troops were going to be involved on the day,

marching in the processions or lining the way.

Detachments would be arriving from nine Commonwealth countries

and 28 colonies.

Major General Julian Gascoigne of the Grenadier Guards

was in charge of Forces' Ceremonial for Coronation Day.

The Queen was Commander-in-Chief of his regiment.

When they were planning this great Coronation parade,

which she was very interested in, she was fascinated by parade and detail,

she said, "Look, this is getting very complicated, Julian,

"just writing it down on bits of paper, we can't really understand it,

"let's go and do it with real little soldiers,

"let's go to Charles nursery, he's got lots of tin soldiers

"and we can put them out and see what it really looks like."

And he told me that, that they lay on the floor together,

sort of propped on their elbows, moving out,

moving bits of tin soldiers about and having a wonderful time.

I think both in scale and attention to detail,

all against a background of Great Britain

that was coming out of the horrors the Second World War

and then the Korean war,

this was seen as a national event of the most enormous significance

and it was for the Armed Forces to represent all the nations

concerned in something that would be joyous but disciplined

but, above all, work well.

'Special courses for police horses are being held at Imber Court, Surrey,

'to get them used to some of the sounds of the Coronation procession.'

RATTLING

'They may not like the noises very much,

'but being good police horses, they'll put up with anything.'

BELLS RINGING

Then, on the 24th March, with just nine weeks to the Coronation,

the Queen's grandmother, Queen Mary, wife of King George V,

died in her 86th year.

The arrangements for the Coronation could have been derailed

as the Court went into mourning for a second time in just over a year,

but Queen Mary had left special instructions

that her death should not get in the way of the Queen's crowning.

The preparations continued.

At the beginning of April, a man carrying a suitcase

stepped out of a car and into this building in Regent Street.

In those days it was Garrards, the Royal Jewellers.

In his suitcase was the Imperial State Crown

and he was delivering it for cleaning and maintenance.

'In London, expert jewellers have been at work remodelling the Imperial State Crown.

'Made for Queen Victoria, it's the most beautiful and valuable

'of all the Regalia.

'It's now being slightly re-shaped to fit the Queen's head.

'She will wear it after the actual crowning.'

The jewelled symbolic objects that make up the Royal Regalia,

are of more than monetary value.

They play a key part in the ritual of Coronation.

People think that it's just sort of pomp and circumstance and,

you know, campery gone bananas, but when you actually analyse it,

there is a reason for it, there is a powerful reason,

it enacts in invisible form, what are the fundamental principles,

through which the monarchy operates in relation to its peoples.

The Times newspaper greeted the arrival of spring that year

with a leader which captured,

in the heightened poetic language of the day,

the sense of rebirth that the Coronation seemed to promise,

especially after the tragedy of the floods, which had claimed 307 lives

along the East coast of Britain at the beginning of February.

'In this springtime, above all, the primeval imagery

'should have for us its richest meaning,

'for the Coronation is the nation's feast of mystical renewal.

'We have passed through a grey and melancholy winter,

'dark with natural disaster,

'darkened also in the symbolical personal orbit

'wherein our society revolves, by the recent loss of a beloved Queen.

'But the spring comes with its annual message

'that all disasters and loss can be transcended

'by the unconquerable power of new life.

'As a nation, as a Commonwealth,

'we take as our supremely representative person

'our young Queen,

'and in her inauguration, dedicating the future by ancient forms,

'we declare our faith that life itself

'rises out of the shadow of death.'

There was a sense in '53 of something new.

Young Queen, beautiful woman.

A sense of youth and optimism,

and a realisation of the first Elizabeth was an heroic age.

It was the invention of England.

The idea of a New Elizabethan Age was picked up by the newspapers

and was everywhere by 1953.

It's difficult now to be sure to what extent this was

just kind of hype and publicity and so on,

and it quite soon took rather grubby commercial forms,

and to what extent it really chimed in with something.

There was great hope and ambitions invested in the children

of the 1950s, they were the future.

'Meanwhile the route itself has been transforming the appearance

'of London's West End.

'Great stands have been steadily going up

'and it's easy to see what a splendid view will be obtained by all

'who are fortunate enough to have seats on them.'

ROUSING CELEBRATORY MUSIC

By mid-May, with two weeks to go,

ships were docking at the major English ports

bringing forces personnel from the Commonwealth and the Empire.

Hyde Park was transformed into an enormous temporary camp

for these troops and their horses.

And barracks across London also became their temporary home.

These were the men and women who would be lining the streets

and forming the processions on the day.

To house and feed them was an extraordinary logistical operation.

After the troops, VIPs began to dock like Her Majesty Queen Salote,

the six foot three ruler of the Tonga Islands.

'Arriving at the Royal Albert docks in the Thames,

'an important visitor was the Sultan of Zanzibar,

'Sir Said Halifa Bin Hera.

'His Sultana was with him,

'and so was their adopted daughter, Princess Amara.

'The 73-year-old Sultan,

'who has ruled over his East African territory for 40 years,

'was clearly in a very happy mood on landing.'

People swarmed into London to watch the final touches being made

to the stands and decorations along the route.

Not everyone whooped with delight.

On the 24th May, the novelist Evelyn Waugh

wrote to his friend Diana Cooper.

'I drove down most of the main streets of London

'and saw the decorations -

'admittedly not complete -

'but banal, common, feeble.

'Perhaps they will be better at night.

'The most offensive feature is the line of parabolic girders

'down the Mall.

'I pray that your dear dim eyes will be shielded

'from too clear a vision of them.'

'While crowds pack the route,

'countless millions of people, both at home and abroad,

'will be sitting down to watch the historic event on television.

'The BBC's television outside broadcast facilities,

'including a score of cameras, have been concentrated in London.'

In those final few days

the cameramen who would be filming the ceremony

inside Westminster Abbey

undertook their technical rehearsals.

All cameras were built into the new tiers of seating

to diminish their presence.

Richard Dimbleby, the BBC's star commentator,

rehearsed his script from a position high up beneath the roof.

During the run up to the big day, he lived on board his own boat.

It was called Vabel, this Dutch barge,

rather fine looking

and he moored it on the river between St Thomas' Hospital

on the one side and the Palace of Westminster on the other,

and he lived there.

His excuse was that this was very close to the big event,

it would be easy for him, he needed to breathe in the air,

actually, it was just a wonderful game for him,

he could be there and the only way that he could get to the shore,

which he very much liked, was a Police launch,

he would hail the launch at 6.00 in the morning for rehearsal

and the police launcher would come across and take him

and then he could walk through the streets to the Abbey,

thinking to himself, "the people will soon be here,

"the Queen will soon be here and here am I at the heart of it all."

On May the 27th the Prime Minister Winston Churchill

addressed the Queen, six Commonwealth Prime Ministers

and a whole host of other figures from the Commonwealth

at the end of a lunch in Westminster Hall.

'Madame,

'in this hall of fame and antiquity,

'a long story has been unfolded

'of the conflicts of the Crown versus Parliament

'and I suppose we are, most of us, at this moment within 100 yards

'of the statue of Oliver Cromwell.

CROWD LAUGH

'But, Ma'am, those days are done.

'It is no longer a case of Crown V Parliament

'but of Crown AND Parliament.'

I think after the experience of the 1940s

for two great dictatorships,

the Nazi dictatorship and the Soviet dictatorship,

perhaps to people's surprise, there was some sense that

the monarchy still had a relevant constitutional role to play.

It was part of the separation of powers,

rather than one monolithic power

and I think Churchill himself saw this as a terrific moment

of potential really, nationally, for renewal and for hope

and for that long sense of continuity with English history.

'A stream of cars down the Mall brought many of the guests

'to the Queen's first garden party of the year at Buckingham Palace.

'The crowds had collected to see them all arrive of course.

'When people are determined to have a look, they generally succeed.

'The guests, who came from all over the Commonwealth and the Empire

'as well as from Britain, numbered about 7,000.

'Happily, the weather was nice and bright when

'the Queen and members of the Royal Family came out across the lawn.'

The leaders of the Commonwealth were made especially welcome.

Britain post-war was seeking a mutual free association

with the peoples it once ruled by Empire.

To make sure that nothing would go wrong,

the Duke of Norfolk organised a succession of rehearsals

in the Abbey.

These culminated in a full dress rehearsal on Friday 29th May,

just four days before the Coronation itself.

At the age of 13, Andrew Parker Bowles was invited to be

the Lord Chancellor's Page.

We were all briefed,

and at the rehearsal we'd all been given barley sugar,

a little bit of barley sugar, a glucose tablet,

and a tiny bottle of smelling salts.

I remember one of the other Pages ate the whole lot in one go

and was then sick.

He was quite a senior page too.

One of the reasons why all British ceremonies work as well as they do

in comparison to those in other countries

is that they are very, very thoroughly rehearsed,

and the Duke of Norfolk was a martinet as far as that was concerned

and he put everybody through their paces

and was absolutely determined that everybody should know exactly

what they were doing and get it right and he was having no nonsense at all.

The Queen mostly practiced in private at Buckingham Palace,

wearing the crown to get used to its weight,

but she rehearsed in the Abbey on four occasions.

She also watched the Duchess of Norfolk impersonating her,

presumably to get an idea of the scale of the ceremony.

The 66-year-old Dr Geoffrey Fisher, Archbishop of Canterbury,

led the proceedings.

The Archbishop was rather a stern taskmaster

and he wasn't very popular with us girls,

I don't know if he was popular with everybody else

and he would sort of make us go over and over again when we knew,

well, we thought we did, knew perfectly well what we were doing.

And once, when he was showing us something,

and said we'd done it wrong,

he'd would then show us how HE said it had to be done

and all of a sudden he did a complete somersault,

he fell down the steps,

rolled over and over with the cassock over his head

and of course we were delighted, that really,

because it, you know, it was sort of quite fitting

that he should be made to look rather silly

because he'd been making us look silly most of the time.

There was a book with about,

well over 100 diagrams to show people,

the ones who were taking part in the actual ceremony,

when to move forward, when to move back.

And they had to have several things going on at the same time,

otherwise the whole thing would have taken ten hours, probably.

So, the Knights Of The Garter are advancing,

the Bishops are moving backwards, the Lord Chamberlain is going here,

somebody else is going there and in one of them,

it literally says underneath,

"This is very complicated

"but if everybody keeps to the timing, nobody should collide."

'In Kensington Gardens,

'one of the camps there is for 5,000 police reinforcements.

'They have been sent from county and borough police forces

'all over the country.'

'Here they are given instructions for tomorrow's task.

'Altogether, about 15,000 police will be on duty.

'Another important factor in controlling crowds will be

'the system of strong barriers at 70 points around the route.

'As soon as safety limits have been reached,

'the barriers will be closed and ticket holders only admitted.'

By June 1st, with just 24 hours to go,

the number of sightseers created a huge transport problem.

Traffic was expected to begin to reach its peak

early the following morning,

when buses would be running into central London

at the rate of 1,000 an hour.

Yet more buses would be put on for the crowds returning home,

and for thousands more people coming in to see

the floodlit buildings and the fireworks.

In the sunshine of that afternoon Coronation Day began for thousands.

They staked their places early and faced the big wait.

'And from today's scenes along the route the Queen will take tomorrow,

'we go far away from the London crowds to Addington Palace near Croydon.

'Here, choirboys have been rehearsing for the Coronation service.

'They come from all parts of the United Kingdom,

'and tomorrow in the Abbey they will join nearly 400 other choristers.

'In this excerpt from the Coronation service,

'they were rehearsing Zadok The Priest.'

# And all the people rejoiced

# Rejoiced. Rejoiced

# And all the people rejoiced. #

Start again from rejoiced.

# Rejoiced. Rejoiced. #

Then it started to rain...

but somehow the wet and the cold

made the crowd even more determined to stay on.

Everyone seemed caught up in an extraordinary air of expectancy,

witnesses to an unique occasion.

Despite the meticulous planning there were some last-minute hiccups.

That evening Major-General Julian Gascoigne

had to face a furious Lord Mountbatten,

the uncle of the Duke of Edinburgh.

Arriving back from Malta,

where he was a Commander with NATO, Mountbatten,

like many courtiers, hyper-aware of his ranking,

took one look at the order of the procession and decided that he

not the Goldstick-in-Waiting

should be riding in prime position next to the Queen's coach.

Mountbatten saw this and was appalled and immediately said,

"Gascoigne, change that,

"I ride beside the carriages, it's my status,"

and Julian said, "No, sir, I'm afraid this is tradition

"and this is what will happen,"

and Mountbatten was so angry and furious that, according to my uncle,

at 9.30 in the morning of the Coronation Day itself

he arrived at the palace and said,

"Ma'am, this is outrageous, I have to ride beside your carriage,"

but she said, "No, I'm afraid Julian is right, we leave it Julian's way."

The Crown Jewels were brought to the Abbey from the Tower of London

the night before the Coronation and laid out in the Jerusalem chamber,

which is a very ancient room just next to the Abbey,

and they were guarded there by eight Beefeaters,

the Yeomen Warders Of The Tower as they're called.

And they came with their mattresses,

they laid out they're mattresses in an adjacent room where they slept

and then in pairs they, they stood guard over the Crown Jewels,

each one was armed with a revolver and 12 rounds of ammunition.

I think in future there'll be slightly more sophisticated way

of looking after them.

"Crowds schooled to sleep out the Luftwaffe's visits on the hard,

"cold stone were not going to be put off by a drop of rain."

..wrote the journalist Philip Hope-Wallace.

The experience of the war coloured descriptions of the Coronation.

Some called it C-Day, in conscious emulation of D-Day.

The Coronation had been planned with military precision,

mostly because so many involved had fought in the war

that had ended only eight years before.

Then, to cheer up the damp crowds

during the early hours of Coronation Day,

came the news that Hilary and Tensing

had reached the top of the world.

The news, news in inverted commas,

came through in the morning of the Coronation in the newspapers,

that Everest had been conquered

and it seemed fantastically felicitous timing.

The reality was that Edmund Hillary and Tensing Norgay

had reached the top of Everest four days before,

but the release of the news had been delayed.

It was essentially a piece of news management,

pardonable perhaps, but even so it was news management.

Guests were asked to be in the Abbey by 8.30 at the latest.

Peers and peeresses in their fur-trimmed robes and coronets

picked their way through the puddles.

Some had made the journey by Tube.

The television coverage was planned to start at 10.15.

Just minutes before, Peter Dimmock and his team

were going through their final checks.

We were, obviously, all on tenterhooks,

waiting for the off, as it were,

and we suddenly heard, I heard over my intercom,

which I had a connection with the engineers,

and they said, "Oh, dear, we've lost picture."

And I thought, "What has happened?"

For an anxious few moments, it looked as if their colleagues

in radio were going to have to go it alone.

Apparently, all it was

was that one of the engineers had tripped over

a vital connecting cable to the main network,

but he very quickly realised what he'd done and reconnected it.

It was a little bit of a scare at the time.

MUSIC: "In A Golden Coach" by Billy Cotton & His Band

WORDS SPOKEN BY BILLY COTTON

# On a day in June

# When the flowers are in bloom

# That day will make history

# Yes, world history

# And the warm, friendly sun

# Will shine down On dear old London Town

# And this wonderful picture You'll see

# In a golden coach

# There's a heart of gold... #

The BBC's live television broadcast was in black and white...

..but independent film companies shot in both colour and black and white.

# The sweetest Queen

# The world's ever seen

# Wearing her golden crown... #

Up to the moment of the start of the Abbey and this procession,

I'd rather taken - not a flippant view of the whole thing,

but it hadn't really dawned on me quite how serious it was,

how important it was, how this was a moment in history

all be it our role, the six of us, was a very tiny role.

That was very frightening. I did suddenly have a moment's panic.

I thought, "What if I faint? What if I fall over?

"What if I do something wrong?"

The loudest cheering came from the 30,000 schoolchildren

ranged along the Embankment.

We were told that the Queen had left Buckingham Palace,

and so we went towards the door and we could hear her coming

because of the shouts, and it was so exciting.

And the nearer she got, the louder the cheers, you know,

and suddenly this amazing coach, and there she was

and there were we, waiting.

Two of the Maids of Honour rode in the procession.

The other four were on the steps of the Annexe

to help carry the 18-foot, crimson Robe of State,

which cloaked the Queen's embroidered dress.

We stood there and we put our hands under her train, lifted it up.

It had little satin handles underneath.

And she just turned round and said "Ready, girls?"

We said, "Yes, we're ready," and off we went.

CHORAL SINGING

The Queen was very keen that Prince Philip should play

as full a part as was constitutionally possible

in the Coronation service,

so he travelled with her to the Abbey and he is in her procession,

so he arrived pretty much just before she did,

but he didn't walk side by side with her,

there was no question of that.

She looked so beautiful.

This amazing dress, covered in embroidery,

and a tiny, tiny waist.

And she had the most beautiful skin and eyes.

# Vivat Regina!

# Vivat Regina Elizabetha!

# Vivat! Vivat! Vivat!

What I love about the Coronation

is the five parts of it.

It's very clear and you can see why things are done.

First of all the recognition.

The church wants to make sure, "Have we got the right person?"

Everyone is given the chance to say, "Yes, this is the Queen."

'I here present unto you

'Queen Elizabeth, your undoubted Queen.

'Wherefore all you who are come this day

'to do your homage and service, are you willing to do the same?'

ALL: Long live Queen Elizabeth.

Once the congregation had shouted its approval,

what should the Queen do?

The Archbishop of Canterbury had suggested a half-curtsey,

but Garter King of Alms had fulminated

that the Sovereign never bends to her subjects.

Eventually, the Archbishop asked the Queen what she thought.

Apparently, she replied, "Oh, I think a curtsey."

FANFARE

We'd all been told, you know,

to have something to eat before we went,

but that was about five hours, you know, before.

We'd had nothing, and we had been told

that we ought to wriggle our toes and we had little phials

of smelling salts in our gloves which we could break.

I suddenly realised I felt very faint.

Luckily, I was at the back against a pillar.

I felt a movement behind,

and I guessed that she was fainting, but I could also smell the ammonia.

Black Rod, who was standing beside me, realised,

because I suppose I was swaying slightly,

and he pinioned me to the pillar with his arm,

and, um, it was a very dodgy moment.

I thought at one point, "I cannot faint,

"I mean, it's too embarrassing, awful."

She was revived and kept going

and, in fact, when we went into the vestry after this period,

I think the Archbishop offered her a tot of brandy, but she refused.

ARCHBISHOP: Will you solemnly promise

and swear to govern the peoples of the United Kingdom

of Great Britain and Northern Ireland...

"Right," the church says,

"before we give this unbelievable power,

"we must make sure that this person's going to behave,"

and so the oath is done.

..and of your possession, and the other territories...

Throughout the history of the Coronation,

the oath marks the balance

between the Crown, the Church and the State.

And, at times, the Crown is in the ascendant,

or the Church is more powerful, or the people have moved forward

in their position of influence in Parliament.

And you can tell that, obviously,

once you come into a constitutional time of monarchy,

which is what the 20th century represents,

that that battle is sort of over and the people are the most powerful.

THE QUEEN: I solemnly promise so to do.

And now, for the first time

in the many times of this ancient ceremony,

Scotland's Church takes part.

The Moderator of the Church of Scotland

had been given a role in the Coronation service

as a result of a symbolic theft.

Early on Christmas Day, 1950, the Stone of Scone -

the relic from the crowning of Scottish kings

which sits beneath the Coronation chair -

had been stolen and taken back to Scotland by nationalists.

Though it was eventually found, the stone remained controversial.

'These initials, JFS,

'apparently newly scratched on the chair,

'are thought to stand for "Justice For Scotland."'

There was a Scottish lobby,

which very much wanted it to be in Edinburgh

and the Queen to have a separate, Scottish Coronation ceremony

in Edinburgh,

but Churchill and the rest of the Cabinet would have none of that.

It was the Dean of Westminster, Alan Don, himself a Scot,

who had suggested that the Moderator be given something to do

at the Coronation as a way of defusing nationalist sentiment.

They decided that the Moderator of the General Assembly

of the Church of Scotland should present her with the Bible,

but it really made no sense at all.

It was trying to reconcile something which was irreconcilable,

and frankly nonsense,

I'd find it very odd if they do it again,

Well, next time they'll have to include Roman Catholics

and other Christian denominations - how that's done, I don't know.

It's creaking, it's a medieval ceremony.

It's amazingly flexible,

but there's certain areas you get to where you can't really tweak it.

MUSIC: "Zadok The Priest" by George Frideric Handel

Then the church is content,

and gives the greatest gift it's got - the anointing.

And with that sacrament the monarch is changed

and becomes something beyond, and, as Richard II said,

"Not all the water in the rough, rude sea

"can wash the balm from an anointed king."

First, the Queen's embroidered dress

was covered by a plain, white garment.

Something I shall never forget is when they took her regalia off her

and she looked so vulnerable,

and I think that moment, when there was no crown,

nothing except there she was just in this white, linen shift,

and they anointed her, you know, that was very, very moving.

Four Knights of the Garter -

the Dukes of Wellington and Portland,

the Earl Fortescue and the Viscount Allendale -

bring forward a golden canopy, which they hold over Her Majesty

so that the sacred moment of anointing is shielded from all eyes.

When it came to the anointing the Dean of Westminster

poured the oil into the anointing spoon,

held it up for the Archbishop to dip his thumb into it

to anoint the Queen.

He did it, he anointed the Queen's hands with the oil,

then he dipped his thumb into the spoon

to anoint the Queen's head and her breast.

But by the time he'd finished saying the prayer,

the oil had all evaporated from his thumb.

But he said in his report afterwards he just touched the Queen's forehead

and her breast, and that was all that was necessary,

but he didn't have to rub the oil off, as he had planned to do.

It brought a lump to my throat.

And I really felt then, this child-woman

is really going to be somebody.

I don't know what made me feel that,

but I had enormous trust in her and faith in her,

just from seeing her standing there in such a straight, and...

I don't know, she looked extraordinary.

In command, but in a nice way.

The Dean of Westminster, assisted by the Mistress of the Robes,

now helped the Queen into the Colobium Sindonis,

or little gown of linen.

Over it they placed the Supertunica,

a coat of magnificent cloth of gold with a crimson silk lining.

Next, the Queen was dressed in the Robe Royal,

a garment that may well be descended

from the imperial cloaks of the Byzantine Emperors -

a reminder of just how fabulously ancient

parts of the Coronation service are.

Once the Queen had received all the Royal vestments,

she was presented with the priceless Crown Jewels.

As each piece of the jewelled regalia was delivered to her,

Archbishop Fisher intoned an explanation of its significance.

Receive the Rod of Equity and Mercy.

There then followed the climax of all the months of preparation -

the crowning.

ALL: God save the Queen!

God save the Queen!

God save the Queen!

The moment was watched by the four-year-old Prince Charles,

just as the Queen had watched her father in 1937,

though his crowning went rather less well.

The problem with St Edward's crown, it that it's not clear

which way round it should sit.

It looks pretty much the same from both sides.

And in 1937, to deal with that, they tied a tiny piece of thread

around the front cross pattee, just above the forehead,

so that, when Archbishop Lang reached for it,

he could see the little thread and know that was the front

and place it on King George VI's head.

Unfortunately, someone cleared it away in the last final checks.

They saw it - "Oh, gosh, we must remove that."

And when you watch Archbishop Lang,

he picks up the great crown from the Dean

and he's turning it around, trying to find which way to put it on,

and, as the King wrote in his diary, "I never did know

"whether it was put on the right way or not."

The Queen had a great reverence and love of her father.

Also she had a huge sense of the dignity of what it was.

It wasn't just having to go through a kind of spectacle

and she was landed with it whether she liked it or not.

She grasped, absolutely, what this was about,

that it was fundamental - she was being enthroned

as Supreme Governor of the Church of England,

as living embodiment of the State, the fount of justice,

the fount of honour, the head of her forces,

and so on, and so on, the list goes on.

And I think she had an overwhelming sense

that this was a moment which, in fact, actually transformed her,

really, I suppose, if you're a Christian believer

by being empowered by the Holy Spirit to carry out this role.

I think that is at the core of it.

From his position high above the ceremony,

the words of Richard Dimbleby, the BBC's chief commentator,

guided the new television audience

through nearly two and a half hours of complex ritual.

The Bishops of Durham and Bath and Wells,

who still support the Queen on either hand,

will kneel with the Archbishop, as do all the Bishops present,

speaking the words of fealty together.

When you watch the images and listen to the voices,

it seems as though my father is conducting the service

alongside the Archbishop.

It's the same use of language,

the structure of the sentences, the words that are used,

and it's very powerful.

You could almost ask, "Who is in charge of this?"

Because there's Dimbleby saying "And now..." and carrying on,

and then the Archbishop, as it were, obeys.

It wasn't like that in reality, of course!

But the beauty of it as an event was the seamlessness.

ARCHBISHOP: Our Sovereign Lady,

Queen of this Realm, and Defender of the Faith,

and unto your heirs and successors according to law.

She's placed into the throne, takes possession of her kingdom,

and it's her turn - "Right, I want homage from all of you."

And then, one by one, they come up and do homage.

The Archbishop had been worried that the Duke of Edinburgh

might have wanted to displace the Church

and be first to pay homage.

But, on this occasion, he was content to follow tradition.

RICHARD DIMBLEBY: His Royal Highness,

the Duke of Edinburgh, does homage,

placing his hands in those of the Queen,

and afterwards touching the Crown, in token that he will support it

with all his power, and kissing the Queen's left cheek.

DUKE OF EDINBURGH: I, Philip, do become your liege man

of life and limb and of earthly worship, in faith and truth...

Prince Philip, I don't think, would have had any problem at all

about doing homage to his wife.

He had been brought up, after all, as a member

of the Greek Royal Family, where it would have been

expected of him to kiss the hands of any Queen that he met.

He was probably relieved that he didn't have to take as big a part

in the ceremony as she did, and he performed his part extremely well.

There had been discussions about who should be giving the homage,

pledging loyalty to the Sovereign.

In this case, it was the aristocracy,

but in the past, of course, it had been representatives

of pockets of power and influence, and by this time, of course,

the aristocracy had no power and influence, really.

LAURENCE OLIVIER: The Queen's uncle, the Duke of Gloucester,

pays his homage.

And there was discussion as to whether, perhaps,

it should be people like the trades union movements,

captains of industry, and so on.

Prince Philip had suggested that perhaps

a representative of the common man should

pledge their loyalty but who should that be?

Should it be the Prime Minister or Speaker of the House of Commons?

And then of course it had been realised that

in order to change the tradition you'd have to get permission

from the Commonwealth countries and that could take many months

so it was decided to leave things as they were.

And there was this tussle between traditionalists and modernists

and in the end, the traditionalists won out.

As the service drew to a close, the Army's top brass,

standing by the West Door of the Abbey

had a difficult decision to take.

Given the foul weather,

should they order the waiting troops into capes and cloaks?

The uniforms are very valuable.

One of the nightmares is the buff, the white belts of guardsmen.

If that runs into their red tunics it can completely ruin them,

and they're expensive items.

But the generals decided that on Coronation day,

when the taxpayer was out in force to see its money spent

on spectacle, the troops should march in their colourful uniforms.

SONG: "God Save The Queen"

As the Queen began her procession out of the Abbey,

the BBC's Peter Dimmock spotted an opportunity for a close-up

which was technically against the rules drawn up

between the Duke of Norfolk and the BBC.

There was a rule that no camera could be nearer

than 30 feet from any member of the Royal Family.

Well, I knew that

but there was nothing about what lens you could use at all.

He selected a telephoto lens.

I didn't deceive anybody I just used a bit of common sense.

TV COMMENTARY: 'The Sultan of Johor

with his young Romanian wife, the Sultanah...

'A truly regal figure stepping into the carriage on the left there,

'the Queen of Tonga.

'Queen Salote, the only other Queen in the Commonwealth

'apart from our own Queen Elizabeth.

CROWD CHEERS

'Sir Winston Churchill with his Garter robes and hat.'

The scale of the processions had threatened to overstretch

the resources of the Royal Mews,

but Sir Alexander Korda,

the film producer and director, had stepped in

and saved the situation by lending seven carriages from his studios.

Mass Observation, the social research organisation

which studied everyday behaviour, had, in 1937, produced a collection

of peoples' responses to the Coronation of George VI.

In 1953 it turned its attention to the Coronation of Elizabeth II.

Peoples' reactions to watching the event interested them,

particularly those seeing it for the first time live on television.

Viewers were encouraged to keep diaries of their day.

"I watched the TV from 10.30am to 5pm without any break

"except for a quick dash to the bathroom.

"My interest was so intense that I never strayed

"from the chair all day. From 9.50 till 5 was wholly concerned

"with the Coronation."

Some people were quite reverential, went quiet, joined in the hymns,

sometimes cried at really serious, solemn moments.

And other people, you know,

the children shouted, the dogs barked,

they just bustled around, although there was, I think,

compared to how people are now in front of television sets,

there was much more of a formal watching

and they called it "viewing", not "watching"

which I thought was interesting

and often "telly viewing" rather than "watching the telly".

The live coverage of the Coronation was the first time television

reached a larger audience than radio.

-TV COMMENTARY:

-'And so the procession of the Queen Mother

'leaves Westminster Abbey.'

'Then the march back began, about half past three,

'what with the steady marching and the bands I became drowsy

'until I was brought to quickly with a pain on my left thigh.

'I had let my cigarette fall from my fingers and it had burnt

'a hole in my frock and a new nylon petticoat and was hurting me.

'After that and a cup of tea, my attention was alert

'and I had no wish for 40 winks.'

One million sets were purchased for the day,

and over 20 million watched.

There was a huge sense of participation in what was going on.

Not necessarily a royalist feeling, I don't think,

but a sense of being involved in something that everybody else

was enjoying throughout the country and throughout the Commonwealth,

and called it a party and people felt "We deserve this,

"we've got through the war

"and we've got through austerity,

"it's time we had a party."

Elizabeth II really had been crowned in sight of the people

as ancient precedent required.

"I was probably more emotionally moved by the viewing

"than the others.

"I found it difficult to keep tears out of my eyes

"and at times they ran over.

'Behind the coach, the Sovereign Standard

'carried by Regimental Corporal Major Maxted of The Blues.'

Most of the people that kept diaries were really impressed by

the Queen's dignity, her apparent commitment to doing it all right

and Nella Last who's one of the most famous Mass Observers

said she thought the Queen was every man's sweetheart.

The live coverage was recorded off a television screen

by technicians at BBC Alexandra Palace.

The film prints that were struck in relays, known as telecasts,

were then flown by helicopter to Heathrow

from the nearby cricket pitch.

At the airport they were loaded onto Canberra bombers bound for Canada.

The arrangement was codenamed Operation Pony Express.

The idea was that the ceremony would be seen in loyal Commonwealth Canada

before it appeared on commercial channels in the United States.

There was an anxiety that the US TV stations would not treat

the day with the same gravitas as the BBC,

a concern which proved fully justified

when NBC's celebrity chimpanzee, J Fred Muggs,

popped up in the middle of the Coronation service

to be asked: "Do they have a Coronation where you come from?"

When the Queen arrived, we got her out of the carriage

and then she turned round and said "Marvellous, it's over,

"nothing went wrong."

and I remember we almost sort of ran down the passage behind her

and she'd taken off her crown.

Prince Charles was trying to carry the crown.

We were terrified he was going to drop it

because we thought that was a bad omen.

Anyway, he didn't, and Princess Anne was darting under the train

and behind that, walked Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh,

and behind that, Princess Margaret actually looking rather sad.

And then we went and had our photographs taken by Cecil Beaton.

He had really such a lot to do.

He had the Queen there for about seven minutes or so.

They would come in and stand in front, or sit in front of

his various backdrops. He had a number of assistants of course.

Photography in those days, there was no chance of checking it digitally,

so the fact that he actually managed to produce extremely fine portraits

is a triumph.

But he also managed to take one or two rather stylish photographs.

There's quiet a sweet picture of Princess Anne walking past

the Queen Mother's train as she leaves the group there

and of course he did a wonderful picture of the Queen Mother

and Princess Charles.

'And now, here is the Queen.'

We followed the Queen out onto the balcony, and there,

you couldn't put a pin between them. There was a sea of people.

'The crowd have broken through the corden of police and guardsmen,

'and they're surging across.

'And here now are the first of the planes.

'The first wing of Meteor jet fighters coming over at 350mph

'at about 1,000 feet.'

Richard Dimbleby was asked by the BBC to return to the Abbey

in the evening for a reflective postscript on the day's events.

He was conjuring up his thoughts

and was aghast as he walked around to see that the pews

where there had been the be-robed aristocracy,

the piers of the realm, men and women in their finery,

were covered with litter, the detritus of the day

There were newspapers, there were tissues on the floor,

would you believe it? On the floor! Disgraceful. Outrageous!

There were whiskey bottles, there were sandwich cases,

He was, in a sense, like a butler who was outraged

by the behaviour in the drawing at Downton Abbey.

But he also knew there was a degree

to which some of the aristocracy rather looked down their noses

at the Royal Family who were ingenue, arrivistes,

they were foreigners who'd come here where as we the aristos,

the real aristos had been for generations,

a sort of snobbery, and he resented that

so I think there's a side of him that was quite pleased

to see to that they hadn't behaved all that well at the ceremony that

was the only thing that mattered, which was the crowning of the Queen.

The Coronation pageantry had been conceived among other things

as a celebration of Britain's continuing role as a great power.

But by the mid-1950s an essentially traditional and conservative society

began to change. We became more affluent, more mobile, more diverse.

The next Coronation will be witnessed by a world

transformed out of all recognition since June 2nd, 1953.

I mean, in 1953 it was antiquated.

You look at it and you can't believe that such a thing was done in 1953.

I mean, don't forget we had aeroplanes and television

and well, I mean, how does it sit with a world with IT

and the net and everything else?

It's sort of extraordinary, surreal...

It's surreal to look at it.

It's haunting, it's hauntingly beautiful and very moving

but it's... You can't get your head around any of it

and it represents tremendous problems next time as to how all that

is to be re-enacted.

But again, it will be tradition and innovation.

All those carriages from the Elstree Film Studios, let 'em roll,