Editor: In the next year or so, I will get to watch my second British coronation. Being a part of the “Silent Generation” which preceded the Baby Boomers, I recall watching the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.
At our end of the street on which I grew up, there was one family that possessed a TV, an incredible luxury in those days. I was invited by a friend to join him and his parents to watch with them.
The TV was a huge wooden box about 30 inches wide, about 24 inches high and about 24 inches deep, with a screen approximately 10 inches across. Instead of pure black and white, the screen had a slight greenish tinge to it.
I was in the fourth grade at McKeough School at the time, and our teacher – Miss Miller – made a considerable fuss over the coronation and the fact that after years of kings, we now had a queen. Each student was given a commemorative bone china plate with the new queen’s image on it, which I still have to this day.
Now we have a new king, and I can revert to singing the version of the British national anthem that I first learned as a child. Thankfully, unlike other anthems, it has not been rewritten multiple times to make it more “woke.”
God save The King!
David Goldsmith
Chatham
