The King is dead, long live the King

Watching on CNN the change of British Prime minister a couple of days ago reminded me of the traditional statement made at Royal changeovers, “The King is dead, long live the King”. We Brits really are brutal to our leaders. As PM, Mr. Brown had the traffic stopped for him on his short journey from Downing Street to Buckingham Palace, on leaving, his car was confronted by early evening London traffic and was even overtaken by a cyclist, albeit jumping a red light. It was not, you will have noticed, a return trip, as his right to go back to what had been home for some three years had been forfeited with his resignation.

We celebrate centenaries of literary, scientific and artistic figures (the four hundredth anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth, the three hundredth anniversary of J.S.Bach’s) but rarely that of politicians and still less past Kings and Queens, so last week saw the much unmarked hundredth anniversary of the death of King Edward VII. What, you might ask, is the connection with Lebanon? Well, he was the last British Monarch to visit Beirut, albeit over thirty years before accession to the throne.

By one of those odd trains of thought this nugget of pub-quiz trivia brought back vivid memories of the coronation. There had been a succession of them, after the record reign of Queen Victoria, the one of Edward VII infamous for having his assorted mistresses gathered together in one part of the viewing gallery in an area nicknamed “the King’s loose box”. But they were all London affairs, photographed for and reported in newspapers the following day for the rest of the population. By contrast, the coronation of the present Queen was televised live, something that boosted sales of TV sets dramatically, back in 1953. My dad bought one – a state of the art, up to the minute, twelve inch screen affair with a black and white image which it was virtually impossible to see without the curtains closed. About twenty five assorted family and neighbours packed our front room for the spectacle, both the event itself and the introduction to a television. The day after, my school, like all schools I suppose, gave a party for the pupils, OUTSIDE, in Sheffield, in glorious sunshine. All present were given a mug decorated with pictures of the coronation – this device, aptly called a coronation mug, which would by now be a collector’s item, has long since been lost or broken or recycled or all three.

Now what connects these two events with a gap of over fifty years? The unwritten constitution in action? That’s a factor certainly, but for me, it’s the effect of the media in making me an active observer of what is happening as it happens, so that although, obviously, I’m not part of it, the feeling of involvement is real.