It was said of the late Duke of Edinburgh that he didn't favour High Church or Low Church so much as Short Church.
Though Charles III's wish to make the Coronation include more of the Britain of today is to be praised, the service didn't half go on. I would have been happy with I Was Glad, Zadok the Priest and then sloping off to the pub.
And, pace C.P, Snow, not all ancient British traditions date from the second half of the 19th century. The anointing screen you see being deployed here is an innovation by Charles. In 1953 his mother made do with a canopy to give her some privacy from the television cameras.
But why should the most sacred moment of the event be shielded from the public gaze at all? Does this decision arise from a fear that it all looks a bit silly?
Leaving aside Penny Mordaunt's turn as a warrior princess, let's consider the strange assemblage of treasures that were brought out, which varied from the priceless to the odd.
Yes, this sort of pageantry can come over as a calling down of the blessing of the Almighty upon the British class system, but the left's instinct for mockery - which I certainly share - does not always help the reformist cause.
I was reminded of the words of the American philosopher Richard Rorty in his Contingency, Irony and Solidarity:
The best way to cause people long-lasting pain is to humiliate them by making the things that seemed most important to them look futile, obsolete, and powerless.
Consider what happens when a child's precious possessions - the little things around which he weaves fantasies that make him a little different from all other children - are described as "trash," and thrown away.
Or consider what happens when these possessions are made to look ridiculous alongside the possessions of another, richer, child.
So if we want to change this strange country of ours, whose current borders date back to 1922, we need first to understand it.
Zadok the Priest is this weeks' Sunday music video - it's one of the pieces of music I used to play my mother in her last days and yesterday's outing seems to have own Handel many new admirers.
And on another musical note, one of Camilla's pages was a great nephew of hers who is also Steve Winwood's grandson. I hope this marks a decision to honour the Spencer Davis Group in all state occasions from now on.
2 comments:
I rather hoped that the removal of the screens would reveal that everyone inside had completely disappeared, as in the Time Bandits.
Noticeably lacking from all the promises and associated paraphernalia was anything about upholding the constitution, which one would have thought to be a prime duty of the Head of State. The problem is that we don't have one - or at least no-one is quite sure what it is - and Charles can't do anything to uphold it anyway. Maybe Queen Elizabeth wanted to tell Boris Johnson just where he could stick his attempt to prorogue Parliament, but she couldn't.
For all that, Zadok the Priest is an absolutely magnificent piece of music.
All good points. You could do the vanishing trick at Ripon, where you go down the steps to the Saxon crypt in one part of the cathedral and come up again in quite another.
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