An Introduction
With the celebrations in 2012 of HM the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, I thought it might be a good idea to start a blog to collect everyone's memories of the Coronation.
Obviously, the memories will come from persons of a certain age!
I appreciate that the actual coronation was on 2nd June 1953, while the Queen ascended the throne on 6th February 1952 on the death of her father, George VI.
Please make any contributions which you think appropriate and leave a real name (if you wish), the location of your celebration and an email address so that people can contact you if they had similar experiences in similar locations.
Since creating this blog, I have moved everyone's memories to the site linked above:
doyourememberthecoronation.org.uk
Please go there and read what people have written and make a contribution.
Robin Dean
robin.c.dean@googlemail.com
Lesley's Memories
ReplyDeleteLocation : Derbyshire.
I remember my parents being excited about Hillary and Tensing reaching the summit of Mount Everest, and also of their excitement at the Coronation being broadcast on television for the first time ever that day.
We did not have a television – my mother had opted for other luxuries in our house. (We had a very modern washing machine and a refrigerator.) However, my parents’ best friends had a television and we were invited to go to their house and watch the Coronation there.
When we arrived, there were lots of people already in the sitting room, occupying all the chairs from that room and all the dining chairs. I had to sit on the floor. The television was quite small and the black and white picture was not very clear. I particularly remember the choir’s rendition of Vivat Regina, which they seemed to sing extremely loudly, and it rang in my ears for quite a long time afterwards. I was also impressed with the sceptre and the orb, although they did look rather heavy. There were whispers from the grown ups as the Coronation proceeded. They all thought our Queen looked lovely, so young, and so composed. They all proclaimed that she had done very well (although I do not suppose they had any idea what she should have done!). There was such a feeling of warmth towards the Royals at that time, and we all loved the pomp and ceremony.
My mother’s friend brought round sandwiches and cups of tea and we sat for what seemed like forever watching this flickering pageant.
Eventually, it finished, and we all went home. There were no street parties on our road, but everyone talked about it over the next few days. The newspapers had many souvenir photographs in their pages, and my mother bought me a glossy magazine with many pictures of the Royal Family in it. Although I liked that very much, she had also recently bought me a magazine about Brumas the bear raised at Regent’s Park Zoo, London and I preferred that!
I believe at school we were all given a coronation mug to remember the event. I have no idea what happened to that. I seem to remember it had two handles and I probably thought it was far too babyish for me. I only needed one handle now.