The royals - Kitty Kelley [62]
“Frankly,” she said, “I do not myself feel at all like my Tudor forebear, who was blessed with neither husband nor children, who ruled as a despot and was never able to leave her shores.”
In distancing herself from her predecessor, Elizabeth II wrapped herself softly in marriage and motherhood. Forty-five years later she would be respected as a dutiful monarch and the most traveled in British history, but lacking as a wife and mother. Elizabeth I, though, would still be admired for the skill, intelligence, and fortitude with which she guided her country.
Coronation fever rose in 1953, and the holiday mood swept over London and into the farthest reaches of the British Isles and dominions. British housewives carried brown ration books that controlled their butter, cheese, margarine, meat, and sugar. But now sugar restrictions were lifted, and people who had been deprived of cake, candy, and cookies for fourteen years indulged in sweets. Tea was derationed, and so were eggs. Wartime preoccupation with rifles, gas masks, and helmets stopped as everyone discussed jeweled swords, tiaras, and coronets. In honor of what was trumpeted as the New Elizabethan era, London turned itself into a gigantic merry-go-round of triumphal arches and twinkling lights. Purple flags and gold pennants with elaborate designs of crowns and scepters decorated the main streets. Shields and medallions adorned office buildings, and lampposts on major thoroughfares were painted a giddy combination of yellow, lavender, black, white, and red. Festive streamers and bunting festooned the seven-mile coronation route the Queen would take after her crowning. Exotic flowers flown in from Australia filled the gigantic boxes in front of Parliament, and two thousand square feet of new carpeting was laid in Westminster Abbey to accommodate the 7,700 guests the Queen had invited to witness her enthronement.
Recognizing the global interest in this event, the British Broadcasting Corporation suggested televising the coronation, but the Queen’s courtiers said no. They said they did not want television cameras recording an event that they felt should be seen only by the aristocracy. They argued that it would be a commercial intrusion on a sacred ritual.
“I don’t see why the BBC should have a better view of my monarch being crowned than me,” said Prime Minister Churchill.
“Quite right,” said the Queen’s private secretary, Sir Alan Lascelles.
The Queen was consulted and was expected to concur. Instead she started asking technical questions about transmitting the ceremony to the far corners of the earth, how many microphones would be required, how the sound system would work, and where the cameras would be placed in the Abbey.
“But… but… the great and blinding light,” protested Lascelles.
And the Archbishop of Canterbury chimed in, “It would be unfair to expose you… to this searching method of photography, without the chance of correcting an error, for perhaps two hours on end.”
The Queen listened but disagreed. “I have to be seen to be believed,” she said.
Days later she sent her husband to the Prime Minister’s office with her decision: The BBC would be allowed to televise the coronation, but with one restriction: no close-ups. The Queen’s democratic gesture astonished the conservative Prime Minister, but he recovered and presented her views to his cabinet.
“Her Majesty believes all her subjects should have the opportunity of seeing the coronation,” he said.
His ministers argued and tried to reverse her decision, but Churchill said there were no options.
“After all, it was the Queen who was being crowned,” he said later, “and not the cabinet.”
The Queen’s decision enabled the world to watch seven and a half hours of continuous live reporting. The television audience was the largest ever at the time—three hundred million.