The People's Coronation with David Dimbleby

Just before 10:30 on the morning of June 2nd, 1953,

the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh set off in style

from Buckingham Palace, a 30-minute drive through the streets of London.

Their destination was here - Westminster Abbey.

The place had been closed for five months

to prepare for a service that would last just two hours.

The service was the Coronation of the 27-year-old Queen Elizabeth...

..a service which dates back 1,000 years.

This is a guide book to a Coronation?

-This is how you have to do it?

-This is an instruction manual,

it simply goes through the whole process.

This is actually what you have to do.

For centuries, witnessing the Coronation service had been

the preserve of the privileged few.

But in 1953, Britain was a different country

and change was afoot.

For the first time in history,

through the medium of television, the ancient and noble rite

of a Coronation service will be witnessed by millions of Her Majesty's subjects.

I think we all knew it was a very momentous occasion.

Well, none of us had ever seen a whole Coronation before.

Never had cameras in on the most intimate part of it.

But letting the people into the Abbey through the window of television

didn't come without a fight.

There will not be what television people

probably are getting used to - the ordinary close-up.

That will not be done.

I was a young teenager at the time,

one of hundreds of thousands of people who lined these streets on Coronation Day.

But the Coronation wasn't just about London.

All over Britain, people made their own plans to celebrate,

in their own way, the crowning of their young Queen.

It was something that was a historic event

and that they wanted to be in,

to have a sense of the history of it and to have participated in it.

Participating meant feasts,

and that meant finding a way round food rationing,

still in force from the war.

I got two of these ox sandwiches - two - and I was over the moon!

It was the first big celebration we'd had since war ended.

The Coronation story begins in February, 1952,

with the death of the 56-year-old King George VI.

The King's body was taken from Sandringham in Norfolk, where he had died,

to Westminster Hall in London, where he would lie in state.

RICHARD DIMBLEBY COMMENTATES: 'There lies the coffin of the King.

'The oak of Sandringham hidden beneath the rich,

'golden folds of the Standard.'

This plaque marks the spot where the King's coffin lay, and over

the next four days, 300,000 people filed past to pay their respects.

The King's daughter Elizabeth became Queen the moment that he died,

but she wouldn't be crowned for another 16 months,

and these people who came here in this February gloom would be back

to share in the excitement of the Coronation.

I remember visits to London in the early '50s -

a very different scene from today.

Eight years after the defeat of Germany,

many of Britain's cities still bore the scars of war.

Wherever you looked, there were ruined buildings and bomb craters.

It was a time of austerity, with food rationed.

The city air hung heavy with smoke from chimneys and cigarettes

and steam trains -

smoke which could merge with fog to make the streets impenetrable.

Britain was pretty much knocked flat by the war, but things began,

quite quickly, to pick up,

and there were events to cheer the country -

the Olympic Games in 1948 and then the Festival of Britain in 1951.

I remember coming to it as a boy here on the South Bank, seeing the great Skylon reaching up so high,

and the Dome of Discovery, full of the things we'd done in the past and were going to do in the future.

In other words, saying to the nation,

"Cheer up, we're on our way".

A monarch who was both a woman and a young mother

came to symbolise a fresh start for Britain.

She and the Duke of Edinburgh were a glamorous couple.

For all but the staunchest republicans, she represented

what the country hoped for - the optimism of a new Elizabethan age.

As Coronation fever mounted, 5,000 people took to the floor

of the Empress Hall in London for a new dance - "Waltz For A Queen".

Britain was once again being led by the former wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

His challenge was to make sure the Coronation outshone the great Festival of Britain

organised by the previous Labour government.

The Royal Mint was soon spilling out the shiny new coinage

stamped with the Queen's head.

In truth, money was in short supply,

but a country bankrupt from the war still found £1.5 million

from the public purse to pay for the Coronation.

That's £36 million in today's money.

The Coronation was fixed for the 2nd of June, 1953.

No question about the venue -

Westminster Abbey had seen the Coronation of every monarch

for almost 1,000 years, ever since 1066.

The preparations for the 1953 Coronation were so extensive

that the Abbey had to be closed to the public for a full five months before the event.

This great Abbey was turned into a building site.

The statues on either side were shrouded in cloth and boxed in.

These huge pillars were all boxed in, the organ was boxed in,

the floor was covered and a railway line was laid

from the west end right up to the east

so that they could create a theatre for the Coronation.

The spectacle demanded an audience far bigger than a normal congregation.

The Abbey can normally seat about 2,000 people for a service,

but for the Coronation, it had to fit in over 8,000.

Here, for instance, they built seats in layers

right up just under that window.

And notices put up all round for the 200 or so workers, saying,

"Remember this is a sacred place,

"please be reverent in your demeanour".

The Coronation service was to follow a traditional pattern.

It had been adapted over the centuries,

but its origins can be found in the library at the Abbey.

This is one of the most extraordinary books in the library.

From the 14th century, it's the Liber Regalis,

and it tells you how to crown a king.

How to crown a king, or a king and queen together, or just a queen.

-It's beautifully illustrated.

-And beautifully written.

Would these illustrations be purely decorative, or are they to act

as a kind of reminder of how it should look when it's done?

I think they're more instructive than decorative.

There's no reason for decoration in a book like this.

Coronations have happened in Westminster Abbey ever since

Harold's Coronation on January 6th, 1066,

and then William the Conqueror on Christmas Day later that year.

Is what it says here pretty well what happened

-at the Coronation in '53?

-The whole pattern is fixed.

First of all, a pulpit, a stage, is prepared between the high altar

and the choir of the Church of St Peter, Westminster.

So this is a sort of guide book to a Coronation,

-this is how you have to do it?

-It's an instruction manual.

It simply goes through the whole process.

This is actually what you have to do.

'The Queen, escorted as ancient tradition demands,

'by the Bishops of Durham and Bath and Wells...

'..goes to the altar.'

So when in the Coronation service they say,

"And by tradition, the Bishop of Bath and Wells

"and the Bishop of Durham on either side of the Queen",

it's here, it's because of this book?

-It's because it was done from 1066 onwards?

-Yes.

Here is the image of the Coronation of the King.

Here are the two bishops either side.

That's always the Bishop of Durham and the Bishop of Bath and Wells.

'The Dean of Westminster brings from the altar

'the Golden Spurs of chivalry, so that the Lord Great Chamberlain,

'the Marquess of Cholmondeley, can offer them to Her Majesty to touch.'

When you watch the Coronation service,

you see particular people holding things.

Is all that laid down in here, too?

I mean, I think there's a bit in here

where the sovereign has to be washed naked so that their skin

glistens, but clearly those two things didn't happen!

Some details of that kind don't happen.

But essentially, the pattern is the same.

While the Church was busy dealing with the religious elements of the service,

the organisation of the Coronation was the responsibility of the Earl Marshal - Bernard, Duke of Norfolk.

16 years earlier, he had masterminded the Coronation of the Queen's father George VI,

and he was well aware that in this complex ritual,

things could easily go wrong,

as they had from time to time in the past.

This is a painting of Queen Victoria's Coronation.

It lasted five hours,

not least because one of the bishops told her it was over when it wasn't

and she had to come back to the throne and finish it off.

Then there were other incidents -

an elderly peer called Lord Rolle was climbing the steps to the throne to do homage

when he fell, and in Queen Victoria's words,

"rolled down the steps".

And then the Coronation ring had been made too small for her fourth finger.

The Archbishop forced it on,

and when she got back to Buckingham Palace, she had to dip it in a basin of ice to get it off,

and said in her diary, "It was very painful".

In the 1937 Coronation, there were new pressures to cope with.

Cinema newsreels were now allowed to film the Coronation,

which meant any mistakes would be seen by a wide audience.

There were some slip-ups recorded during the crowning of George VI.

Before the service, a thread had been attached to the front of the St Edward crown

so the Archbishop could see which way to put it on.

But at some point, the thread had been inadvertently removed,

leaving the poor Archbishop struggling to work out the front from the back.

But in 1937, the Earl Marshal had the means to prevent Coronation mistakes,

or anything he thought unsuitable,

from being seen by the public.

At midnight, on the day of the Coronation,

the King and the 29-year-old Earl Marshal, who had arranged the whole ceremony,

sat together and watched the film and decided which bits

we should be allowed to see and which bits should be cut out.

For instance, they decided that the most sacred moments,

the Holy Communion service, for instance, should be excluded.

But they also took out footage, rather touching footage,

of King George's mother Queen Mary crying because she was so moved.

So in effect, what was happening was the establishment was

censoring the Coronation ceremony.

'We've got three cameras working today, and they're linked up to our new television vans...'

An innovation at the 1937 Coronation

was the first live television coverage.

'Queen Mary in her State Coach.'

There were no live television cameras in the Abbey.

The BBC showed just a part of the procession using three live cameras at Hyde Park Corner.

'Eight magnificent greys drawing up that almost unbelievable State Coach

'with Their Majesties, the King and Queen.'

The television audience was only 50,000 people,

limited to those who lived within a 60-mile radius of the BBC's transmitter

at Alexandra Palace in London.

In spite of the new technology, only a privileged few had been invited to Westminster Abbey

to watch the Coronation as it happened.

Would it be the same story in 1953?

As Coronation Day approached,

this was the hottest ticket in town, an invitation By Command Of The Queen

to be present at the Abbey for the Coronation service.

If you accepted, you got your seat ticket,

this one from the Earl of Denbigh, the Duchess of Argyll,

the Lord Moynihan.

But a whole book was produced showing who had come.

And it's very interesting reading,

the first thousand guests are all members of the aristocracy -

earls and duchesses and barons and marchionesses and all the rest.

Politicians, the House of Commons, lots of foreign dignitaries,

ambassadors, people from the Commonwealth.

The Army, the Navy - everyone you would expect - the judges...

all the establishment, in effect.

And then, at the very back,

a sort of attempt to widen out the range of people who were there,

so the Docks and Inland Waterways Executive are there,

the National Coal Board, the Road Haulage Executive

AND the Trades Union Congress.

So it was an attempt to broaden out the congregation a bit.

But for the public at large, there was hope.

The BBC - at the time the only television broadcaster in Britain -

was planning to use 21 cameras on the day.

This time, they asked to have five of the cameras inside the Abbey,

broadcasting the actual Coronation ceremony live.

At first, they got a dusty answer from the Earl Marshal.

Eight months before the Coronation,

the Earl Marshal announced that live television would be allowed

inside the Abbey to watch the Coronation, on one condition,

and that condition was this - the Abbey is divided into two.

The length of the nave here, and then this great screen which

separates it from the other half of the Abbey up towards the altar.

It's up there that the Coronation service itself took place.

The Earl Marshal's decision was that the television cameras

could watch this part of the service, the processions,

but here and no further. In other words,

the television viewer would be able to see the Queen coming in and going out,

but absolutely nothing of the Coronation service itself.

It was fear that live television would put too great a strain

on the young Queen, at the centre of such complex ritual,

that seems to have been the reason behind the ban.

This could so easily have become the Coronation we never got to see.

When they heard the news that television wasn't going to be allowed in, the BBC was dismayed,

and they wrote to the Dean of Westminster, explaining television

would not be a problem, wouldn't get in the way of the ceremony.

But if the BBC was dismayed, the national press was outraged.

They saw this as a sort of denial of democracy.

They did a poll showing that over three quarters of people

wanted to see the Coronation.

Who were these courtiers, they asked,

making these ridiculous objections?

And if none of them would make up their minds in favour,

then the Queen herself had to intervene on behalf of her people

and say, I agree, my Coronation should be seen by everybody.

As pressure built up, there was a quick rethink at the top,

and the establishment gave way to public demand.

At a press conference, the Earl Marshal spelt out the new rules of engagement.

The television has been arranged...

..and approved by the Queen...

..and I would like to emphasise that there will not be

what television people probably are getting used to -

the ordinary close-up. That will not be done.

So, television had finally been given a front-row seat, even if it

couldn't take close-ups.

Television manufacturers spotted a winner and moved in for the kill.

Murphy was one of the big manufacturers at the time,

and this is their advertisement from the Radio Times

at the beginning of 1953. It's headed, "you have been warned".

"A lot of people (you?) are thinking about a TV set for the Coronation.

"Now comes the sad bit.

"A great many of you (you?) are going to be disappointed.

"There will be a great rush in April and May

"and there won't be either enough sets or enough time to install them.

"The usual clever dicks will cry out that this is just

"an advertising sales stunt,

"but to all sensible people, we say, see your Murphy dealer soon."

No-one knew, at first, what the audience for the Coronation would be.

A basic television set at the time cost between £1,500-£2,000

in today's money.

On the other hand, as the spider's web of television reception

spread across the country, the potential audience was huge.

When Coronation Day dawns, the streets of London will be packed with

thousands of people, thousands more eagerly scan the papers

to see the latest photograph of the Queen or the Royal Family

and to keep up with the latest details of this great event.

Coronation fever gripped the nation, if the newspapers,

broadcasting and the newsreels are anything to go by.

But how accurately did they reflect feeling in the country as a whole?

There is no better place to test the temperature of the nation at the time

than the archives of a group called Mass Observation,

which are held here at Sussex University.

Mass Observation used volunteers to record the everyday thoughts

of people about the issues of the time,

eavesdropping on the nation.

This is the extraordinary archive of Mass Observation.

Boxes and boxes full of questions asked of ordinary people

and answered about what they think of all kinds of things -

about drinking, about money, about budgets,

and here, about the Coronation, telling us

not what the newspapers thought, what the broadcasters thought,

but what the ordinary people of Britain themselves thought.

I think there was enthusiasm.

I think that enthusiasm built over time.

At the beginning of the year,

a majority of people planned not to be involved in the Coronation.

As the event became closer,

more people decided that they DID want to be involved.

I think people began to feel that it was something that was

a historic event, and that they wanted to be in,

to have a sense of the history of it and to have participated in it as a piece of history.

There was grumbling -

there was grumbling about the commercialisation of it,

there was grumbling about the money that was being spent

by the state that could be spent on something else.

Here's a grumbler - "I think far too much money is being spent on the Coronation.

"Only people who are fairly well-off will be able to have a seat on the route.

"Most middle-class people couldn't afford to pay the price."

-I was a lucky one, I had a seat.

-SHE CHUCKLES

This is a 15-year-old girl telling us her views on the Coronation.

She says she's rather tired of hearing Coronation talk everywhere,

and she's sick of not being able to go into a shop

without seeing something to do with the Coronation.

"Everything you handle is red, white and blue.

"It gives me the impression that the Coronation is being

"made into a commercial racket."

One must observe a complaint that even a two-pound bag of tomatoes was being sold

in a Coronation-themed paper bag.

In here is some of the - for want of a better word -

tat that some of the schoolchildren were being critical of.

United Dairies, for example, with their God Save The Queen paper bag.

Here, for example, is a Coronation crown, which is rather beautiful.

Except that it advertises Oxo, not the Coronation.

-Yes, but that's all right!

-"Oxo Cube makes it meatier".

-And you wore it for the...party, for your street party.

-It suits you.

It does suit me.

There's a lot of talk about food.

This is a point in British history where food loomed quite large

because of the rationing that people have been

experiencing for a very long time.

"I'm sure that we will have a lovely meal with the potato crisps

"and margarine that we are being allowed."

"That we're being ALLOWED." A treat.

It was interesting the way in which everybody clubs together

on this day, so it's a festival of food, people bringing stuff.

"One family brought a whole bucketful of fruit salad."

-Doesn't sound very appealing, does it?

-No, it doesn't.

What was that bucket being used for before?!

"Orange Squash, cider and tonic water to make a punch."

In the lead-up to the Coronation, celebrations were

constrained by the restrictions on food consumption -

rationing, retained by Government as part of the post-war austerity.

In 1953, rationing was really serious business.

It was illegal to buy more meat a week than would make

a medium-sized hamburger or two lamb chops, perhaps.

So along comes the Coronation, and some people want to celebrate

in the traditional way, by having an ox roast.

They can't - they're not allowed to use that amount of meat.

What do they have to do? They have to get permission from the man in Whitehall,

and finally the whole subject is debated here in the House of Commons.

And it's agreed that, "We won't allow people to roast pigs

"or sheep for the Coronation, but we will allow them to roast ox,

"as long as they can prove" - so British, this - "that they have a tradition of ox roasting".

One community which did have a proven tradition of roasting an ox

was the market town of Ledbury in Herefordshire.

There was one condition imposed on those who WERE granted an ox roasting licence -

the meat could not be sold. It had to given away free.

In a time of rationing, a seductive offer.

When we arrived, I was absolutely amazed by the amount of people.

It was vast.

The largest crowd I had ever seen, and I don't remember

witnessing a crowd quite as big as that ever since.

It's said that 7,000 people were drawn to Ledbury town centre

that day - nostrils quivering as they anticipated the treat to come.

The heat was intense. Well, it needed to be to cook an animal of that calibre.

After a whole day of basting and roasting,

it was time to carve the joint.

Sheila Alexander, who was our Carnival Queen,

she had the first slice.

There were so many people there,

I don't know if everybody managed to get a slice.

I think they did their best, it took an awful long time.

Getting hold of a slice of the free meat wasn't that easy.

Well, I got on my hands and knees

and I crept between the people in the crowd, and I got to the front

and got two of these ox sandwiches - two - and I remember coming back

to my mother and father and saying, "Look what I've got".

I don't think they were terribly impressed, although I was.

I was over the moon!

-COMMENTATOR:

-'And in the comfortable pub, beer is of course the favourite drink.

'Many thousand barrels of special Coronation Ale have been

'brewed ready for the celebrations.

'Let's try some.'

Throughout the war, beer had been made weaker

because the ingredients were in short supply.

At Harveys in East Sussex, the Coronation gave head brewer

Anthony Jenner the chance to make a special ale with a bit of a kick.

This is the brewing book,

and it's the brewing book for 1953.

The date, January 28th, and the name Coronation Ale.

The page shows the raw materials that went into the brew,

the types of malt that were used, the types of sugar,

and the hop grist, and Highwood hops we're still using to this day.

15 barrels of beer brewed,

and that would have translated to around 10,000 bottles.

He wanted to produce a beer for the Coronation

he saw as the dawning of the new Elizabethan Age,

and they played around with different label designs.

I think Queen Bess was an early incarnation.

But then he settled on the term Elizabethan,

and he utilised within the label

a depiction of the Golden Hinde, Drake's ship,

and the Tudor crown,

and the words Elizabethan Ale.

On either side of the ship was the date, 1953,

to depict that we were moving into another such age.

NEWSREADER: 'As Coronation Day draws near,

'the tempo of preparation all over the country

'increases and excitement mounts.

'Queen Victoria seems to disapprove a little as her skirts are brushed down.

'Britain and the British intend to look their best for Coronation Day.

'Everything will be specially shipshape

'in honour of the new Queen.

'And the red buses will shine in the sun as they carry crowds

'to line the processional route through London town.'

As before any celebration, there was a last-minute frenzy of activity.

Big Ben had to be spotless.

The police horses were rehearsed

for the noisy excitable crowds that were expected along the route.

And those going to the Abbey itself

and those simply marking Coronation Day in their own towns and villages

checked that they would look their best.

The person chosen to give the television commentary

inside the Abbey was my father, Richard Dimbleby.

A household name as a war correspondent on radio,

he had made the transition to television.

And I was with him as he made his final preparations.

I was 14 at the time of the Coronation,

and I started the day in the most extraordinary way.

I was on a boat, a Dutch barge,

moored here on the River Thames just outside the Houses of Parliament.

For some extraordinary reason my father had got the idea

he wouldn't be able to get a hotel room,

and so he'd brought this boat which we rarely used and moored it there,

and at half past four in the morning

there was a bang, bang, bang on the side, and it was the River Police

who came to collect us, to ferry us very kindly

across from the barge here to the pier at Westminster.

And it's from here we set off, my mother, my father, me,

for Westminster Abbey.

If there were 8,000 people seated in Westminster Abbey on Coronation Day

it's estimated that there were two million on the streets of London.

Many had camped out overnight

and were soaked through

by the kind of torrential rain that's not meant to fall in June.

I have a vivid memory

of coming up here to the Abbey with my mother and father.

Of course, the streets of London had been closed.

You were walking in the middle of the road.

But when we got to about here the whole of this place

was full of people who'd been camped out all night,

sitting huddled under blankets.

And as we approached there was a great cheer, and I looked ahead

and they were cheering somebody who was sweeping the roads,

and anything that moved, they cheered,

and then they caught sight of my father, another cheer went up.

And my father, I remember he was wearing a top hat,

and he looked around bemused,

and then realised they were cheering him

and in a kind of musical gesture doffed his hat to them,

and then went off around into the Abbey

and we went up to Regent Street to watch the procession.

The BBC's first estimate was that there could be

over five million people watching live pictures that day.

How wrong they were.

For many it'd be the first time they'd ever seen television.

And the first face they would see on the screen

was BBC announcer Sylvia Peters.

Well, I remember being rather nervous

and I wasn't normally nervous

going on screen, but I was that day.

I had a very long announcement

to learn,

and I don't think I could possibly do it today,

but in those days I could learn very, very quickly,

so I just learnt it on that morning.

And I had to do a rehearsal, which I did, and I was OK,

and then I did the actual opening.

For the first time in history,

through the medium of television,

the ancient and noble rite of a Coronation service

will be witnessed by millions of Her Majesty's subjects.

I think they asked me to do it

because I was the same age as the Queen,

and I was a woman, so was the Queen.

I think it was partly to do with that

that I was the one that led the whole thing off.

And before the Coronation

the Queen had come to the studios to watch a variety programme

and I was asked to go down and was presented to her afterwards.

I think I asked the Duke of Edinburgh if she was going to be nervous

and he said, "Oh, no, she'll enjoy it".

And so, just before 10.30 that morning,

the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh left Buckingham Palace.

RICHARD DIMBLEBY COMMENTATES: 'Her Majesty wearing the crimson Parliament Robes

'and upon her head a jewelled diadem.'

Waiting along the processional route

was a 20-year-old Fleet Street photographer, Chris Barham,

who'd yet to make a name for himself.

I knew she was going to come down Northumberland Avenue

and turn into, onto the Embankment.

He was determined to seize the opportunity.

I kind of sorted out my position

and fortunately for me the police in the area,

it was being policed by lovely coppers

from the country villages of Cornwall and Devon,

and one of them said to me,

"Oh, are you supposed to be standing there, sir?"

I said, "I'm a famous photographer in Fleet Street, if you don't mind.

"And the Queen herself has asked ME to stand here

"so that I get a good picture from in the coach."

And, erm...

"Did she really say that, sir?"

I said, "Yes, yes, oh, yes."

CHEERING

"Oh," he said, "that'll be OK then."

And of course all these little kids,

"Yeee!", screaming and shouting,

and the Queen was looking at them, really.

And I just waited for that moment

when I could see them both in the camera.

Click.

Bingo.

It just made a happy picture,

she was waving and the Duke was smiling.

Within half an hour

it was in just about all countries throughout the world,

and published full pages everywhere.

Gosh,

I got a ten-guinea bonus

for giving them a big, valuable picture.

Eeh!

BELLS RING

The first excitement of Coronation Day

wasn't actually the Coronation itself,

it was news that came through just after dawn,

and here it is, "The crowning glory, Everest is climbed.

"Everest, the highest mountain in the world,

"had for the first time been conquered.

"Tremendous news for the Queen,

"Hillary does it.

"Glorious Coronation Day news!

"Everest - Everest the unconquerable - has been conquered.

"And conquered by men of British blood and breed."

These sumptuous colour pictures of the Coronation

were filmed to be shown later in cinemas.

By comparison, the BBC's live television coverage

was grainy and in black and white.

NATIONAL ANTHEM PLAYS

It was the first time that we saw a television set.

CHEERING

It electrified you in the excitement of seeing something

that happened miles away and that was of profound importance.

The picture wasn't terribly good,

but it was just wonderful

to be watching something going on in London,

and all the excitement, the crowds of people.

'As the music rises in triumph, we await Her Majesty the Queen.'

The Coronation was not only being viewed on TV sets in Britain.

Live pictures were relayed to France, the Netherlands

and 600 miles away to British troops stationed in West Germany.

TRUMPETS PLAY

ORGAN PLAYS

CHOIR SINGS

High up here behind the High Altar

in the triforium, this gallery which runs round the Abbey,

was where the commentators sat,

and Richard Dimbleby among them for television sat up here

just able to look down through these pillars

and see, in effect, the top of the head of the Queen

and the ceremonial going on.

CHOIR SINGS

In fact, when the moment of the Queen's crowning actually came,

he put down his microphone

and picked up a little cine camera

and took a shot from here which we've got at home.

You can't see anything, you can just see lights

and you can just see the top of the Queen's head

but he thought it was a very important moment

and he had to record it.

RICHARD DIMBLEBY: 'Now are brought for the first time

'in 300 years, the Armills, the bracelets of pure gold

'representing sincerity and wisdom,

'the gift of the Commonwealth, to this Coronation.'

My father had this Coronation book

which everybody in the congregation had.

Beautifully bound in red morocco with the gold on the front,

but in this one he had written all his commentary,

all the notes,

because the key thing for him was not to speak over the ceremony,

so he'd carefully written all the notes of what he was going to say,

and with little addendums like "start smartly"

meaning get in as soon as the music stops

or get in as soon as the prayer ends,

or you'll miss your chance to say what you want to say.

'The Queen has received all the Royal vestments.

'She now receives the priceless and beautiful Crown Jewels,

'culminating in the Crown itself.

'But first...'

Receive this orb set under the cross

and remember that the whole world

is subject to the power and Empire of Christ our Redeemer.

What I also like about this is the language he used.

It's not like the language people normally speak,

it's slightly part of the ceremonial as well.

So, for instance, instead of saying

when the Coronation moment came, now the Queen will be crowned,

he says, "The moment of the Queen's crowning is come".

Notice the is - is come.

'The moment of the Queen's crowning is come.'

ALL: God save the Queen!

God save the Queen!

God save the Queen!

TRUMPET FANFARE

When the broadcast was over

my father admitted he had been very nervous.

He said it was one of the most nerve-racking broadcasts he'd done.

It was obviously a very important occasion for the BBC,

and I don't suppose his mood was much helped

by a memorandum from the BBC saying,

"I have full confidence that in no way will you let us down".

# God save our gracious Queen... #

As the Queen came down the aisle

the BBC took a chance

and showed one of those dreaded close-ups

the Earl Marshal had forbidden.

# God save the Queen

# Send her victorious... #

The Coronation was also being broadcast live on radio,

not just in English,

but with commentary in 41 languages to all corners of the world,

who were fascinated by the rituals of British Monarchy.

# ..over us... #

Perhaps the oddest place it was heard, though,

was deep under the Atlantic Ocean.

A British submarine, the HMS Andrew,

was making the first non-stop crossing of the Atlantic underwater,

and a sailor under the waves there

heard the strange sound coming through on the radio of trumpets,

and wondered what it was.

And then it dawned on him what he was listening to under the waves

was the Queen's Coronation in Westminster Abbey in London,

thousands of miles away.

TRUMPET FANFARE

BELLS RING

As the Queen completed her part in the Crowning Ceremony,

the rest of the country started their own celebrations,

and mock Coronations.

The archives of Mass Observation show that they took many forms.

They were interested in the glamour of it.

They were interested in the aesthetics of the whole occasion,

the coach, the beauty of it.

It is their Coronation,

or at least they take an event, which is a national event,

and turn it around and make it theirs.

It's turning it into something which actually

might be very far away from the Queen herself,

so the local celebration of people spending time together.

DRUMROLL

People were sort of celebrating amongst themselves,

they weren't just necessarily focused on the event.

On the West Wales coast

volunteers on the world's first preserved steam railway

decided they too would do their bit for Coronation Day.

The railway basically ran this special train

both morning and afternoon,

and they invited the local schoolchildren down

and they filled the train up.

It was towards the Coronation, to do our bit

and show that this little railway which these volunteers had taken over

wanted the townsfolk to benefit from a ride on the train.

It was their part in representing the Coronation Day, you see.

WHISTLE BLOWS

Well, I was the fireman on this locomotive on that day.

I was just a couple of months before my 14th birthday.

WHISTLE BLOWS

The special train on the day of the Coronation.

It's all in Welsh, isn't it?

I thought it would have been, I can't remember,

I thought it was half Welsh, half English, but it's all Welsh.

Well I put it on the top bracket by the chimney on that day.

It takes you back a bit, doesn't it?

WHISTLE BLOWS

I'm in a rather noisy underpass

in the city of Salisbury in Wiltshire.

Here we are, back in 1953, in the church.

The congregation sitting here, not celebrating a service,

but watching this tiny black-and-white television set

up here on the wall.

And what they're watching is the 1953 Coronation.

And then as you go down, there are all the scenes of celebration.

There's a girl licking her ice cream,

a little boy in his train.

But what is really extraordinary

is that right in the middle of this procession,

which you would have almost seen anywhere in Britain,

is something quite unique.

This.

This is the amazing Salisbury Giant.

He originally belonged to the Tailors' Guild in Salisbury,

and is said to be 500 years old.

The face, which is the oldest part, made of painted wood,

with its moustache and its black beard, its pink cheeks.

This giant was carried round the town

to celebrate Coronations and Jubilees,

when it would be brought out

and carried just like the processions in London,

carried round Salisbury with crowds lining the streets.

And the person who carried it was a butcher,

because butchers are used to carrying haunches of meat on their shoulders.

I'll see if I can do it. Squeeze in.

Now,

the danger is that - ow! - it falls over,

which it has done from time to time.

And then lift.

And hope it doesn't fall over.

There we are, just moving a little bit, just to show.

Britain had many ways of celebrating the Coronation,

but in a way, this Salisbury Giant

is one of the most revealing,

because what happened here is what was happening all over Britain.

People were delving back into their history

to celebrate Queen Elizabeth II coming to the throne.

In London, the Coronation procession back to Buckingham Palace

was made up of over 12,000 troops

from Britain and the Commonwealth and Empire.

It was so long it took take 45 minutes to go past.

My mother and I had seats

on the first floor of a shop in Regent Street.

We could look down over the whole of the street,

thronged with people on either side, flags, bunting,

and there was this little stage with seats on it

so we could look down,

and then behind in the room was the television set,

and we could watch the actual service

on this black and white flickering set behind there

and once it was over came out here,

sat in our seats and watched the procession.

We had this Coronation souvenir programme

which showed the route and showed all the contingents,

hundreds and hundreds of them, thousands upon thousands.

And into a great crescendo with the Royal Procession itself,

and the Queen's gold coach coming down here,

which was, I have to say, a little bit of a disappointment

because from this height

you could only actually just see the Queen in the window of the coach itself.

By then it was starting to rain,

and as the procession went on it rained harder and harder

until it was teeming down.

Everybody was soaked to the skin.

And I remember all the wimps had had their carriages covered,

so we couldn't see them at all,

and the one exception, everybody remembers her,

was the Queen of Tonga who sat with her carriage open,

beaming with pleasure, waving to the crowds,

and in front of her there was another sultan I think it was,

who looked absolutely drenched,

but she absolutely carried the day, the Queen of Tonga.

Troops had come from all over the world

to take part in the Coronation parade.

But for the people living in those distant countries

it would be weeks if not months before they could see

pictures of the day's events.

The Canadians, among the most fervent Royalists, weren't prepared to wait.

In an era before satellites

the only way to get the television pictures of the Coronation to Canada

was to fly them there.

It began on a cricket pitch

adjacent to the BBC studios at Alexandra Palace.

There, there were two RAF Sycamore helicopters

waiting to rush the films from there to London airport.

The films were transferred to a waiting RAF Canberra jet bomber,

British-built and the only jet aircraft

capable of making a non-stop trans-Atlantic crossing.

The first Canberra took off from London airport at 1:36pm,

just after lunch.

The aim was to have the pictures on Canadian television

on Coronation Day itself.

The camera arrived after a flight of five hours and nine minutes

at Goose Bay in Canada,

and there the Royal Canadian Air Force took off,

they put the films from the Canberra

into one of their own fighters

which was flown to Montreal,

and taken into the city by helicopter

and then transferred it immediately.

It meant that Her Majesty's subjects in Canada

were able to share the same experience as the people in Britain had seen of the Coronation.

And it wasn't just a sentimental thing.

In 1953 the British Empire, the Commonwealth, was still a going concern

and it was important that Canadians saw the young Queen

being crowned that day.

CHEERING

The Royal Family was, as ever, box office in the United States.

American networks were desperate to broadcast the Coronation pictures.

But there was just one issue.

American television was commercial, it had advertisements,

unlike in Britain where there was no such thing at the time.

But the Americans tried to reassure us.

"Don't worry," they said, "we'll treat the thing

"with the greatest dignity and good taste."

One advertisement, bang in the middle of the Coronation,

was for a motorcar advertised as the queen of cars.

And another, at one of the key moments in the ceremony,

one of the most sacred moments when the Queen is anointed with Holy Oil,

for a full minute just before it happened

there was an advertisement for a deodorant.

And then there's J Fred Muggs,

the chimpanzee who was the mascot of NBC.

And he appeared right through the Coronation to people's horror on this side of the Atlantic.

At one point the presenter turned to him and said,

"And do they have Coronations where you come from?"

CHEERING

Many thousands of the two million out on London's streets

gathered outside Buckingham Palace in the late afternoon

hoping for a glimpse of their newly-crowned monarch.

ALL: We want the Queen! We want the Queen!

We want the Queen! We want the Queen!

They were not disappointed.

CHEERING

The Queen returned to the balcony five times that evening.

But the huge crowds outside the Palace

were a fraction of the number of people

who saw the Queen on that balcony.

All over the country, millions more peered into their shadowy TV sets

at home, or watched in cinemas,

or the pub.

In the event, of course, it was television that won the day.

In the run-up to the Coronation a million sets were sold,

many bought by people who suddenly realised in a panic

if they didn't get it they'd miss it.

And on the day itself,

20 million people watched the Coronation on television.

TRUMPET FANFARE

Television had created an opportunity

for those millions to share with those in Westminster Abbey

the crowning of the Queen.

Looking back it seems extraordinary

that the issue had ever been in doubt.

All through the 60 years of the Queen's reign

there's been this debate raging

about how to fit the ancient traditions of monarchy

into the modern world,

how to balance formality with popularity.

And when it came to the first big decision of the reign,

over the Coronation, popularity won out.

By allowing television cameras into the Abbey,

right here into the heart of the ceremony,

it had decided that this should be,

as far as possible, the people's Coronation.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd