Elizabeth II with crown, orb and sceptre, 1953

French lavatory attendant a dead-ringer for Edward VII 

Edward VII had finally recovered sufficiently to be crowned on Saturday 9 August 1902. By that time many were bored of the whole business. Because the Boer War had just ended, there had been rather a lot of public holidays and processions that year. So on the day of the coronation many Londoners did what they always would on an August bank holiday. They got on the train and went to the seaside. The town was emptier than usual.

The coronation of Edward VII in 1902 set the precedent for all the coronations of the 20^th century. A boom in Victorian popular history meant that, by 1902, everyone – rich, poor, educated and less so, was up for a pageant. And what better than a good old coronation? Edward VII’s coronation in 1902 added to popular, royal spectacular street pageants a whole layer of mock-historical dressing up and marching.

Official events for Victoria’s coronation in 1838 had lasted exactly one day, even though there were (as usual) feasts and fireworks in many parts of the country. For Edward VII’s coronation in 1902 there was a fortnight of events. Everyone wanted to be in on the act.
 
And of course, there were plenty of film cameras, with dozens of crews coming from around the world and paying good money for the best viewpoints. They were not, of course, allowed into the Abbey. That was anyway much too dark for filming. But early film-makers loved celebrities, street scenes and processions, and a coronation was perfect.

There was even a brief silent film of the ceremony itself [well, a very condensed version of it, both in length and in scale.] It was a Franco-British co-production that had been made in a studio in Montreuil in France over the preceding weeks. It starred an unnamed lavatory attendant - or maybe he was a brewer’s assistant, or a man who worked in a laundry. Versions differ. The important point was that he happened to be a dead-ringer for King Edward VII.

The ceremony in August, after Edward's recovery, had been shortened since the film was made, so some of it was now wrong. When he watched it, Edward didn’t mind. He was delighted. ‘What a wonderful thing cinema is. It’s found a way to record even the parts of the ceremony that never happened.' He was particularly pleased that, in the film, he looked taller than his queen. Kings of England have often been sensitive about their height.

Lord Esher, as a 'Gentleman of France', Devonshire House Ball 1897

The chilling ghost of Lord Esher

The monarchy Britain has today is very much a late Victorian and Edwardian monarchy, created – you might say trapped – in the expectations of Merrie England and olde worlde popular history that existed in the 1890s and 1900s.

And if one man is responsible for that, it is Reginald Brett. He is usually known by the title he inherited in 1904, Viscount Esher. Let’s leave aside his abuse of schoolboys at Eton, including it is said his own son.

Esher was obsessed with Empire, with antiquity and what he saw as history. He was also mad about the theatre – which was just then going through a bit of a golden period in London. And he personally adored the dressing up. In fact he insisted that everyone in royal ceremonies – not just the military – had to wear a uniform, to distinguish themselves from the mere mortals who could watch from the sidelines. You only had to watch the funeral of Elizabeth II over a century later to see that Esher’s love of uniforms and stagey presentation has stuck.

Esher also introduced meticulous organisation and rehearsals. There were to be no more embarrassing mishaps at royal events.  And this too has stuck. The rehearsals for the coronation of George VI in 1937 and Elizabeth II in 1953 were relentless, like invading Normandy.

Since 1902 Coronations have also been used to make international statements. At the coronation of George VI in 1937, the display of old-fashioned British imperial pomp was intended to contrast as strongly as possible with the marching military of Hitler and Mussolini. Elizabeth’s coronation in 1953 was similarly a statement to the USA and the new European Community that little, battered old Britain wasn’t done yet.

The coronation of Charles III occurs in the context of Brexit and deep economic crisis and carries as much international weight as anything that has gone before.

In 1953 the Coronation committee flatly refused to allow TV cameras until an outcry from the press, and a firm word from the young queen. TV licenses jumped from 1.5m to 3m. Go and watch some of it.  It’s an endless procession of old men in fancy dress, carrying the swords of this and the rods of that, and the rings of something and the armils of something else, and the order of this and the order of that and the Duke of somewhere and the Earl of somewhere else.

At last the young Elizabeth arrives looking terrified. It is an extraordinary moment.