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Commonwealth leaders gather at Buckingham Palace
PA has a little more detail on the lunch that has been held at Buckingham Palace.
There were 42 attendees in total, including UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, and prime minister of New Zealand Chris Hipkins.
From the royal family there were the king, the Prince and Princess of Wales, the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh, the Princess Royal and Vice Admiral Sir Tim Laurence, the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester and the Duke of Kent.
Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex and Prince Andrew, Duke of York don’t appear to have attended, amid much speculation about what roles they might play in tomorrow’s ceremony.
Later, Charles, who is head of the Commonwealth, will also attend a Commonwealth Heads of Government leaders’ meeting and garden reception at Marlborough House.
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It has been raining in bursts in central London. Here are some shots of the people who have already gathered well ahead of tomorrow’s coronation.
Commonwealth leaders gather at Buckingham Palace
PA has a little more detail on the lunch that has been held at Buckingham Palace.
There were 42 attendees in total, including UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, and prime minister of New Zealand Chris Hipkins.
From the royal family there were the king, the Prince and Princess of Wales, the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh, the Princess Royal and Vice Admiral Sir Tim Laurence, the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester and the Duke of Kent.
Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex and Prince Andrew, Duke of York don’t appear to have attended, amid much speculation about what roles they might play in tomorrow’s ceremony.
Later, Charles, who is head of the Commonwealth, will also attend a Commonwealth Heads of Government leaders’ meeting and garden reception at Marlborough House.
There is a 70% chance of showers at the same time a flypast to celebrate the king’s coronation is due to take place, forecasters say.
Royal fans who will be in London to celebrate the occasion are advised to bring umbrellas, cagoules and waterproof jackets with dreary weather expected.
Royal Air Force air chief marshal Sir Michael Wigston has said “it’s 50/50” as to whether a flypast scheduled to fly over the Mall and Buckingham Palace after 2.15pm will take place if there is rain and low cloud.
It is due to consist of more than 60 aircraft including the Red Arrows display team, but a final decision will be made just one or two hours before it is due to start.
Met Office meteorologist Alex Deakin told the PA news agency: “There will be outbreaks of rain in London from 8am onwards, nothing too heavy, it’s just going to be a bit grey, damp and drizzly.
“It won’t rain all morning, just a bit on-and-off with some drizzle, it may stop for half an hour or so and come back again, that kind of thing.”
Having carried those quotes earlier about India having little interest in the coronation [see 12.47 BST], this picture caught my eye on the news wires, showing some young art students in Mumbai putting the finishing touches to their King Charles artworks.
The palace has issued a series of photos taken this afternoon at a realm governors general and prime ministers lunch, ahead of the coronation. In attendence were the king, queen consort, and the Prince and Princess of Wales.
A town’s coronation party had to be cancelled after organisers failed to raise any money to cover costs, claiming there was a “lack of interest”.
PA Media reports Caldicot, in south-east Wales, was due to host a celebration in the town centre complete with big screen and children’s entertainment, but with just over a week to go the event was axed.
In an online post, Caldicot Town Team said a crowdfunding page had been running for 16 days, but despite being promoted on social media it had “failed to raise any money whatsoever”.
The post added: “Caldicot Town Team have taken the decision that in the current financial crisis, it would not be a good investment of funds, and could be better spent throughout the year, such as Family Fun Day and Street Food Festivals.”
It comes as other parties around the UK are cancelled, including one due to be held at The Rotary Club in Exmouth, east Devon, which failed to sell enough tickets to pay for it.
US first lady Jill Biden has been welcomed to Downing Street by the prime minister’s wife Akshata Murty.
PA Media reports Dr Biden put down her umbrella to pose for photos with Akshata Murty outside the No 10 door.
Biden and Murty were expected to hold private talks in Downing Street.
Murty also greeted Finnegan Biden, the granddaughter of Mrs Biden and the president, who has accompanied the first lady to the UK to attend the coronation.
In India, another country fomerly subjugated by the British empire, Associate Press reports there is scant media attention and very little interest in the coronation. Some people living in the country’s vast rural areas may not have even heard of King Charles III.
“India has moved on,” and most Indians “have no emotional ties with the royal family,” Pavan K Varma, a writer and former diplomat, said. Instead, the royals are seen more like amusing celebrities, he said.
And while the country still values its economic and cultural ties with the European country, Varma pointed out that India’s economy has overtaken the UK’s.
“Britain has shrunk globally into a medium-sized power,” he said. “This notion needs to be removed, that here is a former colony riveted to the television watching the coronation of Prince Charles. I don’t think this is happening in India.”
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has pushed to erase colonial “symbols of slavery” from the country’s time repressed under the British crown. Colonial-era street names, some laws and flag symbols have been removed.
“I don’t think we should care much about (the royals),” Milind Akhade, a photographer in New Delhi, told AP. “They enslaved us for so many years.”
Associated Press has been gauging interest around the world in the coronation, noting that when King Charles III is crowned on Saturday, soldiers carrying flags from the Bahamas, South Africa, Tuvalu and beyond will march alongside British troops in a spectacular military procession in honour of the monarch.
For some, the scene will affirm the ties that bind Britain and its former colonies. But for many others in the Commonwealth, a group of nations mostly made up of places once claimed by the British empire, Charles’ coronation is seen with apathy at best.
In those countries, the first crowning of a British monarch in 70 years is an occasion to reflect on oppression and colonialism’s bloody past. The displays of pageantry in London will jar especially with growing calls in the Caribbean to sever all ties with the monarchy.
“Interest in British royalty has waned since more Jamaicans are waking to the reality that the survivors of colonialism and the holocaust of slavery are yet to receive reparatory justice,” the Rev Sean Major-Campbell, an Anglican priest in the Jamaican capital, Kingston, said.
The coronation is “only relevant in so far as it kicks us in the face with the reality that our head of state is simply so by virtue of biology,” Major-Campbell added.
Rosalea Hamilton, an advocate for changing Jamaica’s constitution to get rid of the royals, said she was organizing a coronation day forum to engage more Jamaicans in the process of political reform.
The timing of the event is meant to “signal to the head of state that the priority is to move away from his leadership, rather than focus on his coronation,” Hamilton said.
At 74 years old, Charles III is the oldest monarch ever to take the throne. At the same age, his mother was gearing up for her golden jubilee. And in this special podcast today, Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland tells Maeve McClenaghan this means there will be a very different tone from the last coronation.
Rather than a country crowning a young queen who was virtually unknown as a public figure, Charles’s views on everything from architecture to ecology have been widely aired. And his reign will be as an old man.
He also arrives on the throne with a lot more known about his private wealth. As the Guardian has shown in its groundbreaking Cost of the Crown series, he can lay claim to assets of more than £1.8bn. As Britain faces a cost of living crisis, the Treasury has coughed up an estimated £100m for the weekend’s event. Should the family have funded it themselves?
Here’s the podcast …
Here is a picture of King Charles leaving Westminster Abbey earlier today after the final rehearsal for tomorrow’s ceremony.
The British ambassador to Ukraine, Dame Melinda Simmons, has been doing her bit for the coronation Kyiv, despite it being a week when Russia has launched strikes on Ukraine’s capital.
Ukraine is being represented at the coronation by Olena Zelenska. Yesterday she visited the British Library in London to look at some of its Ukrainian collection with Rishi Sunak’s wife, Akshata Murty.
As mentioned earlier, it is worth remembering that this isn’t just a coronation for the UK, despite it taking place in London. King Charles III will be a head of state in countries and territories spread across the globe, including Canada, Australia, New Zealand and several Caribbean countries, as well as some scattered smaller islands.
Barbados ditched the Queen and became a republic in 2021, with Belize and Jamaica likely to follow suit.
Yesterday Oliver Laughland reported for the Guardian that the prime minister of Belize, Johnny Briceño, had sharply criticised Rishi Sunak’s refusal to apologise for Britain’s role in the transatlantic slave trade, and said it was “quite likely” Belize would be the next member of the Commonwealth realm to become a republic.
His comments came as a senior member of the Jamaican government said it would begin a process after the coronation to bring in an elected head of state.
Briceño, who leads Belize’s centre-left People’s United party, took office in 2020, and in 2021 passed a parliamentary resolution committing the government to seek reparatory justice from the UK “on behalf of the former slaves and their descendants of Belize”.
Belize is one of 14 members of the Commonwealth realm, where the crown remains the symbolic head of state. It is the only country within the realm that King Charles III has never visited.
Caroline Kimeu
Caroline Kimeu reports from Nairobi that the distant familiarity and affection many in the Commonwealth had with the Queen does not necessarily extend to her son:
On the streets of Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, questions about the coronation are met with a blank stare. “That one, I’ve never heard of,” says David Ouma, a 36-year-old taxi driver.
There is no buzz or chatter about the coronation of Charles III among the market traders or in the pubs – although it’s likely to make the front page of newspapers at the weekend.
“I was thinking of gathering some friends to watch it, but I don’t know if there’ll be interest unless I package it as a catchup,” says Ken Gichinga, 38, an economist.
What public interest in the royals there was in the African Commonwealth countries, such as Kenya and Nigeria, has shifted over the past few years as citizens focus on pressing national concerns. But the anointing of the king is likely to reignite debate around Britain’s brutal colonial history, as happened across the Commonwealth after the death of the queen.
As he edges his way through rush-hour traffic in the suburb of Kilimani, Uber driver Joseph Njoroge, 45, is confused by the question. “I thought when his mum died he had already become king? I only know him as the heir but don’t know much about his personality.”
Anne Macharia, a 43-year-old pharmacist, is also vague on the subject as she lifts her groceries from a trolley into her car at the shopping mall. “I know the coronation is this Saturday. I will watch if time allows. He was prince for a long time so it would be nice to see him get crowned.”
You can read more of Caroline Kimeu’s report here: ‘That one I’ve never heard of’ – Africans unimpressed with Charles celebrations
Talking of children, the former school of King Charles, Gordonstoun, has sent out a press release to say that the junior schoolchildren there will be holding their own mini-coronation today. It lets us know that:
Hamish Montgomery, aged 6, will play the part of King Charles and will be accompanied by Jessica Cook, aged 7, who will play the part of Queen Camilla. The ‘royal couple’ will travel by pony and trap down the school’s ‘silent walk’ to its historic Michael’s Kirk, where the real King would once have worshipped whilst at school.
When asked if he had any advice for our King ahead of the Coronation, Hamish said “have a bath”. His ‘wife’ the ‘Queen’ added, “and porridge for breakfast”. They both agreed they are very excited about the performance.
I must confess I don’t know if either of my children are doing anything special at their schools today for the coronation, but I suspect if they are that it won’t involve a pony and trap.
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