Neighborhood lunches, a big concert at Windsor Castle in the evening with international artists, volunteering actions… The day after the coronation of King Charles III and Queen Camilla, the British take part in multiple festivities on Sunday May 7 to celebrate the event.
They will last until Monday, a public holiday granted especially for the coronation, during which they are encouraged to participate in voluntary actions but where no appearance of the royal couple is officially planned.
A coronation “big breakfast” shared among neighbors
On Saturday, the British are first invited to share a “big lunch” through neighborhood parties. On the menu the “coronation quiche”, whose vegetarian recipe was unveiled in mid-April by the palace: cheese, tarragon then spinach and beans for seasonal vegetables. The British should be thousands to participate in these shared meals, with pennants and decorations in the colors of the British flag.
The royal couple have delegated the representation of the crown at these lunches to other members of the royal family. Prince Edward and his wife, Sophie, will travel to Cranleigh in Surrey (south of England), Princess Anne and her husband, Timothy Laurence, will be in Swindon, in the Cotswolds (west) and Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, daughters of Prince Andrew who became an outcast of the family, have been announced in Windsor.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has planned to invite volunteers, Ukrainian refugees and groups of young people to Downing Street for a post-coronation lunch.
A big concert at Windsor Castle on Sunday evening
After several days of rehearsals, receptions, garden parties and solemn coronations at Westminster Abbey, the royal couple, aged 74 and 75, will organize a private reception at Windsor Castle, located to the west. in London, before attending the big coronation celebration concert, which is due to start at 8 p.m. local time (9 p.m. French time).
The event, which will bring together 20,000 spectators, will be hosted by actor Hugh Bonneville, famous for his role in the hit British series Downtown Abbey.
The American singers Lionel Richie and Katy Perry, the Chinese pianist Lang Lang, the Italian opera singer Andrea Bocelli and a choir of more than three hundred people from very diverse backgrounds will perform there. But no British headliners responded.
Actor Tom Cruise is also set to make a video appearance, along with Winnie the Pooh, possibly following in the footsteps of the Paddington Bear, star of a video where he had tea with Queen Elizabeth II at the opening. of his jubilee concert in June 2022.
A “glorious crowning glory” for the weakest audiences
Saturday’s religious coronation in London of Charles III made for a historic day, with all the pomp associated with great events in the monarchy. The photo of Charles being crowned made headlines in Britain on Sunday, hailing the “glorious coronation” of the monarch.
Charles III, wearing heavy ancestral ceremonial robes, was cheered, sworn in, anointed and crowned at Westminster Abbey in front of 2,300 guests, in an age-old Anglican rite, modernized at the margins. His wife Camilla was also blessed and crowned queen. Accompanied by a spectacular procession, the couple then returned in a golden carriage to Buckingham Palace, from where they greeted from the balcony the thousands of fans who had braved the rain to see him.
In the UK, at its peak, the coronation was watched by more than 14 million viewers – out of a population of 67 million comparable to France – on BBC channels, a figure suggesting a total audience well lower than that of the coronation or funeral of his mother, Elizabeth II, last September.
The commemoration had gathered more than 26 million viewers with a peak of 28 million viewers, including 18.5 million on the BBC. Even if the BCC accounts for a large part of the audience for this type of event, the other channels have not yet communicated their data.
In France, nearly nine million viewers on average watched it on all the channels that broadcast it between noon and 2 p.m. – TF1, France 2 (which gathered the most of them), M6, BFM- TV, LCI, Franceinfo, Cnews – according to data from Médiamétrie on Sunday.
Arrests then releases of anti-monarchist activists
Aged 74 and the oldest British king ever crowned, Charles III is not as popular as his mother, Elizabeth II, who died in September. Before his coronation, 72% of Britons, unmotivated by the latter, said they had no intention of participating in any celebration, according to a YouGov poll on Friday.
On Saturday, on the sidelines of the coronation, anti-monarchy protesters demonstrated in London as the carriages passed, as well as in other British cities, leading to the arrest of 52 people, in addition to dozens of environmental activists known for their actions of coup de fist blocking traffic and disrupting public events.
The London police, who had announced a very low degree of “tolerance”, notably arrested six officials of the latter, including leader Graham Smith. They were released about 16 hours later on Saturday evening. Hundreds of “Not My King” signs were also seized, according to the anti-monarchist group Republic, although hundreds of the organization’s supporters were able to demonstrate peacefully.
“The right to protest no longer exists in the UK,” Graham Smith said on Twitter, noting that their phones had been confiscated from them: “I have often been told that the monarch serves to defend our freedoms, maintaining our freedoms are attacked in his name. »
These arrests have also been criticized by elected representatives of the left-wing opposition and human rights organizations. They came as a controversial new law, enacted days before the coronation, boosts the powers of the police to counter protests, allowing arrest on the basis of a simple intention to disturb public order.
