The Queen's Coronation in Colour: Special footage brought together for ITV documentary

Credit: PA

It might have been a typically cool and grey British summer’s day, but the colour of the Queen’s coronation in 1953 is revealed tonight in a new documentary.

ITV has brought together the best colour footage of that June day in 1953 when the country stopped to watch the Queen travel from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Abbey for her coronation.

Queen Elizabeth had already been the Head of State since the death of her father the previous year, but this was the moment tens of millions of people gathered around small television sets to watch the event happen live for the first time.

Those sets were of course in black and white, but colour film does exist of the day and it’s all been brought together for this programme.

The streets of the capital were also lined with crowds and the Queen’s cousin, Prince Michael of Kent (like her he is a grandchild of King George V and Queen Mary) describes how those crowds watched the carriage procession.

Long before mobile phones, they used cardboard tubes with mirrors which acted like periscopes to see over the heads of the people in front of them.

"So you had a forest of these strange-looking things which were sticking out from the crowd," the Prince tells the programme.

The periscopes allowed the crowds to catch a glimpse of the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh, other members of the Royal Family as well as Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

The Queen travelled to the Abbey in the Gold State Coach which is so heavy it needed eight horses to pull it.

In the crowd was an 11-year-old boy who grew up to be one of the country’s best known actors.

Michael Crawford, who played Frank Spencer in ‘Some Mothers Do ‘Ave Em’, described how it "brought our country together" and said the day was "very stirring, moving and brings out great pride".

Sir Trevor McDonald, Len Goodman and Alison Steadman share their own memories of the festivities across the UK and the Commonwealth.

Prince Philip pushed for the Coronation to be televised and it became the world’s first major television event.

  • The Queen's Coronation in Colour is on ITV at 9pm tonight