This June marks the 54th anniversary of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. Now I happen to be from a country that doesn’t have hereditary rulers; our royalty are film and TV stars, hastily crowned and easily deposed. But I’m also old enough to remember the occasion of Elizabeth’s ascension to the throne, and even in the U.S., the atmosphere was carnival, with 1950s matrons snapping up commemorative souvenirs, nothing else worth talking about for weeks leading up to the 2nd of June 1953, and everyone gathering around the archaic midcentury television to watch the ceremony in Westminster Abbey. Communications satellites were only a gleam in Sir Arthur Clarke’s youthful eye in 1953, so I suppose we must have watched a filmed and quickly-flown-across-the-Atlantic coronation in the States, but the thrill was palpable.
I lived with my aunt and uncle at the time, and I recall that as my aunt and I settled in to witness history, my uncle found something else to occupy him for political reasons. I was far too young for rebellion in those days, but in his lifetime Ireland had fought a bloody and protracted war, outmanned and outgunned on their home turf, to win independence from English rule. They call those years “The Terror” for a reason, and it had all ended scarcely more than 30 years previously. James Patrick McKenna was immune to the borrowed glamour of British royalty.
I don’t think I gave Elizabeth II or royal families in general a great deal of thought after that, and my only childhood brush with political fame was meeting the president of Turkey, another strange childhood moment from the heart of the desert. So I was rather taken by surprise when America erupted with royalist fervor once more over the wedding of the Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer. I mean you could only escape it by going home and barring the door and unplugging the TV. What it must have been like for the British I can only imagine, but I felt downright assaulted by it 6000 miles away, so my heart goes out to the poor Brits.
The world has changed since those innocent times – either of them – and now the vulnerable young Queen of my scratchy black-and-white images is eighty-something, and Charles has Camilla, whom it would seem no-one likes but him, and Channel 4 is airing tapes of a dying Diana against the express wishes of her sons, and my uncle Jim is 12 years in his grave, a rebel till the end. I have yet to go see guards changing into whatever it is they change to, though there’s absolutely no politics involved – just apathy. I’ll await visitors from the States to give me an excuse to do such a shamefully touristy thing. I hope they don’t take forever to get here…
I lived with my aunt and uncle at the time, and I recall that as my aunt and I settled in to witness history, my uncle found something else to occupy him for political reasons. I was far too young for rebellion in those days, but in his lifetime Ireland had fought a bloody and protracted war, outmanned and outgunned on their home turf, to win independence from English rule. They call those years “The Terror” for a reason, and it had all ended scarcely more than 30 years previously. James Patrick McKenna was immune to the borrowed glamour of British royalty.
I don’t think I gave Elizabeth II or royal families in general a great deal of thought after that, and my only childhood brush with political fame was meeting the president of Turkey, another strange childhood moment from the heart of the desert. So I was rather taken by surprise when America erupted with royalist fervor once more over the wedding of the Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer. I mean you could only escape it by going home and barring the door and unplugging the TV. What it must have been like for the British I can only imagine, but I felt downright assaulted by it 6000 miles away, so my heart goes out to the poor Brits.
The world has changed since those innocent times – either of them – and now the vulnerable young Queen of my scratchy black-and-white images is eighty-something, and Charles has Camilla, whom it would seem no-one likes but him, and Channel 4 is airing tapes of a dying Diana against the express wishes of her sons, and my uncle Jim is 12 years in his grave, a rebel till the end. I have yet to go see guards changing into whatever it is they change to, though there’s absolutely no politics involved – just apathy. I’ll await visitors from the States to give me an excuse to do such a shamefully touristy thing. I hope they don’t take forever to get here…
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2 comments:
Interesting the bit about American Royalty. Today, in case you missed it from over there, was Paris Hilton day. Seriously. G-8 summit, space shuttle lift off, immigration bill... none of them could draw the networks away from non-stop Paris.
The day of Charles and Diana's wedding was a public holiday, the streets were full of people celebrating and only those with a leaning towards the republican stayed inside with their doors shut and their TVs turned off. It was the kind of day that made you feel that you belonged to a larger national community. Those days are long gone.
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