![]() The first portrait of King Charles III to be released since the change of reign, commissioned by the Illustrated London News and painted by Alastair Barford. The Scottish London regiment, in full uniform, has come to pipe in the portrait, and one of their members is wearing a regimental leopard skin called Clarence, after a cross-eyed lion in a 1960s television show called Daktari. Jeroboams of Bollinger circulate, bottles so heavy that the servants have trouble lifting them up for the last drops. The crowd is fancy-British, with that sumptuous London opulence that verges on the cloying. I have sweet-talked my way past security by explaining, with all the open-faced Canadian innocence I can muster, that I am just a little reporter from far-away Canada and I’ve come to Britain to understand the preparations for the grand coronation. “God save the king!” I find myself shouting, absurdly.Īt an April evening sponsored by Bollinger champagne in the Burlington Arcade in Mayfair, the Illustrated London News is unveiling a painting of Charles. I mean, it’s all fun and games, but his face is going to be printed on my money. Charles is a symptom of twin identity crises: the man represents us, but it’s hard to think of anyone less representative. The real absurdity will be deeper, for both Canada and Britain. He’ll be sitting on a chair over the Stone of Destiny, a stone English kings stole from the Scots over 700 years ago. He’ll be wearing a hat with a ruby that Henry V wore into battle. He’ll be holding the world’s largest diamond on the end of a stick. ![]() This week, on his fancy carriage ride, Charles will be surrounded by many preposterous objects. Nostalgia and vanity, and ultimately self-deceit, led them into a calamity which seems, at the moment, impossible to recover from. And underlying the recognition of their error is a dawning realization of the failure at its root: the British people – not the press, not the politicians – failed to understand their place in the world. It’s hard to celebrate when inflation is at 10.1% and the Bank of England has to raise interest rates again, especially when it costs £100m.Īs of April, only 34% of Britons still believe that Brexit was the correct decision. ![]() For the British, the national pride supposed to underlie a coronation has been exposed and harried: UK GDP cut by 4%, a lost £100bn a year in output, the pound losing a fifth of its value, all since Brexit. The coronation ceremony has been curtailed, and will last a little over an hour, we’re promised, as opposed to the three hours allotted for Queen Elizabeth II.įor Canada, the absurdity of the coronation is basic: we are not a British colony, but we have a British king. The crown itself seems embarrassed by all the fuss. ![]() In Canada, where I live, the majority of citizens are in favor of severing ties with the monarchy altogether (up to 70% in Quebec). In April, various polls gauging the public mood around Charles’s ascension found that only 15% of the British population were “very interested” in the coronation. The coronation cannot be described as a popular event. But this week if you’re British or a member of the 56 sovereign states that still, somehow, find themselves in the Commonwealth, you’re waking up in a country where a priest is going to smear oil – vegan oil from Jerusalem – on a rather pinkish, rather broad forehead to signify one man’s status as the Lord’s anointed. You might think you live in a time of truth and reconciliation, or perhaps even, if you’re feeling optimistic, progress.
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