King Charles III's coronation to take place in May 2023
Buckingham Palace has named the date of King Charles's coronation. ITV News Correspondent Rachel Younger has more
The coronation of King Charles III will take place on Saturday May 6, 2023, Buckingham Palace has announced.
The King will be crowned at the religious service alongside his wife Camilla, the Queen Consort.
The palace said the ceremony will be “rooted in longstanding traditions and pageantry” but also “reflect the monarch’s role today and look towards the future”.
The Archbishop of Canterbury will conduct the coronation at Westminster Abbey in London, in keeping with a 900-year tradition.
Charles III will be anointed with holy oil, receive the orb, coronation ring and sceptre, be crowned with the majestic St Edward’s Crown and blessed during the historic ceremony.
Camilla will also be anointed with holy oil and crowned, just like the Queen Mother was when she was crowned Queen in 1937.
The King is expected to sign a proclamation formally declaring the date of the coronation at a privy council meeting later this year.
The King acceded to the throne on September 8, immediately on the death of his mother, Elizabeth II – the nation’s longest reigning monarch.
The coronation is to be staged just a few weeks before the 70th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II's coronation, which took place on 2 June 1953.
Coronations have taken place at Westminster Abbey for the last 900 years and since 1066, the service has almost always been conducted by the Archbishop of Canterbury.
And for over a thousand years, the ceremony has followed a similar structure.
King Charles III's coronation however, will be "shorter, smaller and less expensive" amid the cost-of-living crisis, the Daily Mirror reported in September.
The paper also reported that the King plans a "slimmed down" monarchy, with the number of working royals cut to seven.
The late Queen’s coronation was a carnival of celebration and a morale boost for a nation starved of pageantry in the wake of the Second World War.
People began to bed down in the streets of London as early as 48 hours before Tuesday June 2 1953, just to make sure they had a standing place to watch the Queen pass by in the gold state coach in a grand procession.
By the Monday evening, in pouring rain and driving wind, half a million people were already lining the procession route.
Charles, who was only four at the time, attended the service.
He has recalled his mother going to say goodnight to him the night before while wearing the crown so she could get used to its weight on her head.
Charles described the “thousands of people gathered in The Mall outside Buckingham Palace chanting ‘We want the Queen’ and keeping me awake at night”.
The 1953 coronation was shared with a wider audience through the relatively new medium of television, which came of age with the screening of the ceremony for the first time.
An estimated 27 million people in Britain alone watched the ceremony live on their black and white TVs and the images were also beamed around the world.
The Duke of Norfolk, who organised the Queen’s funeral, also has the role of staging the coronation.
He was recently banned from driving for six months after pleading guilty to using his mobile phone behind the wheel – despite claiming he needed his licence to arrange the forthcoming ceremony.
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