London : Crowds from across Britain and the world gathered on Saturday in London where Charles III will be crowned king in Britain’s biggest ceremonial event for seven decades, a sumptuous display of pageantry dating back 1,000 years.
There will be crowns and diamonds, soaring music, purple robes and magnificent hats — and a rousing cheer of “God Save the King” inside the abbey and in the streets outside.
The church buzzed with excitement and was abloom with fragrant flowers and colorful hats as guests began to arrive two hours before the ceremony. Streaming into the abbey were celebrities such as Judi Dench, Emma Thompson and Lionel Richie, alongside politicians, judges in wigs, soldiers with gleaming medals attached to red tunics and members of the House of Lords in their red robes.
Charles succeeded his mother Queen Elizabeth when she died last September and at 74, he will become the oldest British monarch to have the 360-year-old St Edward’s Crown placed on his head as he sits upon a 14th century throne at London’s Westminster Abbey.
