LONDON (Reuters) – The coronation ceremony for King Charles on Saturday will be the most glorious display of pageantry seen in Britain for a generation and will provide an economic boost to the nation, its organiser and Buckingham Palace have said.
Charles, along with his wife Camilla, will be crowned at London’s Westminster Abbey in a historic event whose origins date back some 1,000 years, and involving thousands of military personnel in a mile-long procession through central London.
“This is a proud moment in our national history,” said Earl Marshal Edward Fitzalan-Howard, the Duke of Norfolk and England’s most senior peer.
“This is also a time to remind ourselves of the pride we have in our great country and our unwritten constitution which has served us so well for over 1,000 years during our long history,” Fitzalan-Howard, whose family have organised state occasions since 1483, told reporters.
Some 7,000 armed forces personnel will be involved in ceremonial duties, with more than 4,000, including military bands, taking part in a procession from the Abbey back to Buckingham Palace where the newly-crowned king and queen will be given a royal salute in the gardens. Fitzalan Howard said it would be a “brilliant spectacle”. Then, royals traditionally wave to the crowd from the balconies of Buckingham Palace as military planes pass by.
As the palace has previously admitted, the service itself reflects a different era, unlike Queen Elizabeth’s 70 years ago.
In 1953 she had 8,000 in attendance, but at Westminster Abbey she has only 2,300 guests.
Critics question the cost of extravagant coronations at a time when the public faces a cost-of-living crisis. “It’s not my position to say how accurate these numbers are, but it’s certainly theorized that the celebration represents a major economic boost for the country,” the spokesperson said, adding that the very The presence of many heads of state is also networking.
However, consulting firm Pantheon Macroeconomics said it expected Britain’s gross domestic product to fall by about 0.2% in May from the previous month.
