CORONATION HISTORY
Westminster Abbey has played host to almost 40 ceremonies, including those of Queen Elizabeth II and Queen Victoria
The Queen in her sumptuous coronation robes in June 1953. The Queen Mother
(right) talks to grandson Charles as his aunt Princess Margaret looks on during the ceremony
With its pomp, pageantry and regal opulence, Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation on 2 June 1953 was one of the most magnificent royal occasions of the 20th century.
Despite the heavens opening on what was expected to be a sunny summer’s day, the radiant smile of the young monarch lit up London and the watching world.
While 8,000 prestigious guests packed into Westminster Abbey, an estimated three million well-wishers thronged the streets in celebration, their jubilant cheers filling the skies of the capital. Meanwhile, tens of millions of people around the globe were glued to radio sets or cinema newsreels – including, in a historic first, some 27 million of them watching on the BBC’s nascent TV service – to see every detail of the momentous event.
“Never has there been such excitement,” said the then Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s private secretary Jock Colville. “Never has a monarch received such adulation.”
Elizabeth, who was 27, had already been proclaimed Queen and Head of the Commonwealth and Defender of the Faith upon her father George VI’s death, but the coronation marked her formal acceptance of the role and enthronement as sovereign.