Congratulations Your Majesty!

On June 2nd, 2018, the Queen marked 65 years since her  remarkable Coronation Day. We look back on the day she became Britain’s seventh female monarch…

 After more than six decades of serving the nation, Queen Elizabeth II shows no signs of slowing down, as we have shown in this issue! With so many milestones marking her reign it was perhaps not so surprising that no major celebrations were planned to mark the anniversary, though the 92-year-old did mark her official birthday on June 9 with the annual Trooping the Colour parade in London.

A Coronation is a ceremony marking the formal investiture of a monarch with regal power. In 1937, the 11-year-old Princess Elizabeth had watched her father, King George VI, crowned in the elaborate ceremony and 16 years later on 2 June 1953, her own official Coronation was to take place.

Coronations have been held at Westminster Abbey for 900 years and The Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II was to follow suit. But the Coronation of 1953 was ground-breaking in its own right. It was the first ever to be televised, and was watched by 27 million people in the UK alone and millions more audiences around the world.

Sir Winston Churchill and other cabinet members urged the Queen to spare herself the strain of the heat and glare of the cameras by refusing to have the ceremony televised, but luckily she decided not to accede to their wishes. For the first time the ordinary people of Britain were able to watch a monarch’s Coronation in their own homes – and the sale of TV sets rocketed!

Queen Elizabeth II was the sixth Queen to have been crowned in Westminster Abbey in her own right. The first was Queen Mary I, who was crowned on 1 October, 1553.