At 10am I watched a meeting of the AccessionCouncil live on television. Nobody alive today had ever seen such a meeting before, indeed back in 1952 the Queen was the youngest person present and even she's gone now. It was an astonishing gathering including six previous Prime Ministers, and how thankful we were that Boris Johnson was now one of those. Penny Mordaunt oversaw proceedings with considerable gravitas, even though she'd been chair of the Privy Council for less than a week, while PM Liz Truss had all the presence of a nervous sixth former. The rubberstamping of a new monarch by the Lords spiritual and temporal duly progressed to the traditional template, and for the first time was witnessed by all.
At 11am, without switching channels, I watched the Garter King of Arms step out onto the balcony above Friary Court at St James's Palace, bookended by trumpeters in heraldic garb with a pair of fanfares to play. Their audience was a couple of hundred fortunate civilians shepherded in from The Mall who got to stand behind the Coldstream Guards and experience a ceremony familiar across centuries past. Back then this moment would have been the first opportunity for anyone to hear the proclamation, but as a TV licence holder I'd already heard all the Liege Lord stuff before. I fancied hearing it again but this time first hand.
At noon I was standing outside the Royal Exchange in the City of London to hear the proclamation for a third time. I couldn't see any of the main players, I'd have to have arrived somewhat earlier, but I did see the Lord Mayor's hat and mace process past the heads of onlookers ten rows in front. My view was also blocked by TV cameras from CBS and the Far East, not to mention a sea of raised phones set to record, so instead I got to experience this unique spectacle mainly by listening to it. First we got a battle-off of the trumpeters - one crew back at Mansion House and the other up on the steps - then someone cried out "Silence!" and the Lord Mayor began reading out the proclamation again. The identity of the new monarch would once have been genuine news to those assembled here, but we listened intently to the unnecessary anachronism anyway.
After further fanfares the military band struck up the national anthem, and more than one person near me joined in singing "God Save the Queen" before realising those lyrics had expired. The crowd joined in rather louder with the three cheers that followed, the final Hip Hip Hooray echoing up Cornhill as the ceremony drew to a close. The Americans to my right, fortunate to be in the country at a time of transition, thanked the elderly Brit who'd been providing a running commentary explaining what the hell was going on. And as the crowd started to disperse I watched the hats and wigs process past again, their duty done, with likely a few drinks to follow back at Mansion House. The archaic spectacle only made proper sense when I got home and watched it on TV, and this proved to be the fourth time I'd heard the proclamation, given at St James's Palace this tenth day of September in the year of Our Lord two thousand and twenty-two.
