The Meaning of the Coronation

That headline isn’t mine. Rather, it was the name of a paper written by my father Michael Young and his colleague Edward Shills in 1953 about the Coronation of HRH Elizabeth II and published in an academic journal called Sociological Review. You can download it here – it’s terrific. Drawing on the work of Emile Durkheim, they argue that the Coronation was an affirmation of the moral values by which our society lives – an act of national communion. They summarise their hypothesis as follows:

A society is held together by its internal agreement about the sacredness of certain fundamental moral standards. In an inchoate, dimply perceived, and seldom explicit manner, the central author of an orderly society, whether it be secular or ecclesiastical, is acknowledged to be the avenue of communication with the realm of the sacred values. Within its society, popular constitutional monarchy enjoys almost universal recognition in this capacity, and it is therefore enabled to heighten the moral and civil sensibility of the society and to permeate it with symbols of those values to which the sensitivity responds. Intermittent rituals bring the society or varying sectors of it repeatedly into contact with this vessel of the sacred values. The Coronation provided at one time and for practically the entire society such an intensive contact with the sacred that we believe we are justified in interpreting it as we have done in this essay, as a great act of national communion.

Is that also true of the Coronation we witnessed today? The sacred symbols were all there – the Coronation Chair, commissioned by Edward I; the orb; the imperial state crown that includes a ruby Henry V wore at the Battle of Agincourt. But for the people watching it on television, did it feel as if they were making contact with a realm of sacred values? Did the ceremony embody the fundamental moral standards that characterise British society? Was it an act of national communion?

It is tempting to answer ‘no’ because the whole affair was so deeply rooted in Christianity, from the role of the Archbishop of Canterbury to the blasts of choral music, and we are a post-Christian society. A lot of the the commentary – I flitted back and forth between the BBC and GB News – focused on the way in which this Coronation ceremony had been updated compared with the last one, with peers representing the different faiths, a female bishop taking part, the address by our Hindu Prime Minister, etc. But the most striking thing about it was how little had changed since 1953. I kept an eye out for the intrusion of ‘woke’ elements, but I was disappointed – or, rather, pleasantly surprised. In essence, Charles’s kingly authority was conferred on him by God, as was explicit in the most mystical part of the ceremony when he was anointed with holy water standing behind a screen in his shirtsleeves. What sacred meaning could that possibly have for people who don’t believe in God?

But I think that’s based on a superficial understanding of the meaning of the ceremony. Shills and Young also describe the Britain of 1953 as a ‘post-Christian’ society and while there were many more church-goers back then, how many of them understood all the Christian elements in the Coronation? Indeed, the fact that much of it was incomprehensible – then, as now, many parts of the ceremony seemed completely bizarre, like the placing of a rod into the hands of the monarch – is part of what makes it so quintessentially British. That dimension of it was captured nicely by the Australian rock star Nick Cave, who was in attendance today. In his blog a few days ago, he included his response to various tetchy emails he’d received asking him why he was bothering to go:

I once met the late Queen at an event at Buckingham Palace for ‘Aspirational Australians living in the U.K.’ (or something like that). It was a mostly awkward affair, but the Queen herself, dressed in a salmon coloured twin-set, seemed almost extraterrestrial and was the most charismatic woman I have ever met. Maybe it was the lighting, but she actually glowed. As I told my mother – who was the same age as the Queen and, like the Queen, died in her nineties – about that day, her old eyes filled with tears. When I watched the Queen’s funeral on the television last year I found, to my bafflement, that I was weeping myself as the coffin was stripped of the crown, orb and sceptre and lowered through the floor of St. George’s Chapel. I guess what I am trying to say is that, beyond the interminable but necessary debates about the abolition of the monarchy, I hold an inexplicable emotional attachment to the Royals – the strangeness of them, the deeply eccentric nature of the whole affair that so perfectly reflects the unique weirdness of Britain itself. I’m just drawn to that kind of thing – the bizarre, the uncanny, the stupefyingly spectacular, the awe-inspiring.

So, that is part of its meaning – for many, the Coronation embodied the uniqueness of our country. Not an affirmation of our sacred values, perhaps, but a celebration of our eccentricity, our oddness. Some people dislike the Royal Family and point to its vast wealth, as well as the cost of staging events like this (£250 million). Couldn’t that money be better spent helping the disadvantaged? But most Britons have a strong attachment to the monarchy and I suspect that’s partly because no other country can put on a show like this. For better or worse, this is what we’re famous for, this is why millions of tourists come to Britain every year to see the Royal Palaces and hope to catch a glimpse of the occupants.

There’s also the fact that the Royals are a family, something that’s central to the institution’s meaning for many people. Shills and Young cite Bagehot’s explanation of how the actions of a retired widow and unemployed youth (Queen Victoria and the Prince of Wales) become of such importance: they are members of a family and, as such, they are relatable for the mass of ordinary Britons. To be sure, some members of the Firm in attendance today were conspicuous by their black sheep status, but it was the web of family relationships surrounding Charles that provided some of the most touching moments, such as when his son William helped dress him after he’d been anointed. What Shills and Young say about this aspect of the 1953 Coronation could equally have been said about today’s:

The family, despite the ravages of urban life and despite those who allege that it is in dissolution, remains one of the most sinewy of institutions. The family tie is regarded as sacred, even by those who would, or do, shirk the diffuse obligations it imposes. The Coronation, like any other great occasion which in some manner touches the sense of the sacred, brings vitality into family relationships. The Coronation, much like Christmas, was a time for drawing closer the bonds of the family, for reasserting its solidarity and for reemphasising the values of the family – generosity, loyalty, love – which are at the same time the fundamental values necessary for the well-being of the larger society. When listening to the radio, looking at the television, walking the streets to look at the decorations, the unit was the family, and neither mother nor father were far away when their children sat down for cakes and ice cream at one of the thousands of street and village parties held that week. Prominent in the crowds were parents holding small children on their shoulders and carrying even smaller ones in cradles. In all towns over the country, prams were pushed great distances to bring into contact with the symbols of the great event infants who could see or appreciate little. It was as if people recognised that the most elementary unit for entry into communion with the sacred was the family, not the individual.

So, yes, it was a deeply odd occasion and it probably meant a little less to today’s Britons than the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth did 70 years ago. But the revelation for me today was how meaningful it all was, how much of a connection there still is between the British people and their monarch, how little disenchantment there is with the symbols and rituals of a dying religion, as well as the great outpouring of affection from ordinary people, not just towards this jug-eared 74 year-old and his wife, his son, his daughter-in-law and his grandchildren, but towards each other. Britain did not feel like a country gradually succumbing to strife and division today, but a strong nation, still quietly patriotic, still with a high degree of social solidarity, still capable of renewal.