Indeed, by the early 1950s, it was the only such imperial crown existing anywhere in the world: the Chinese, Russian, Austro-Hungarian, German and Ottoman thrones had all vanished during the 1910s, and although the Japanese emperor had survived in 1945, he did so as a deeply discredited sovereign and a much-diminished figure.ġ950s: The Queen’s 1953 Coronation was the first ever to be televised Photograph: ITV/REX Shutterstock
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As he ended his broadcast, he turned from eulogising the late king to acclaiming the new monarch, by linking the last great reign of a female sovereign with the one to come: “I,” he concluded, “whose youth was nurtured in the august, unchallenged, tranquil glow of the Victorian era, may well feel a thrill in invoking once more the prayer and the anthem ‘God save the Queen.’”ĭespite the searing impact of the first and second world wars, and the end of British India in 1947, the throne to which Elizabeth acceded remained recognisably the imperial institution it had become by the closing decades of Victoria’s reign: a great-power monarchy for the great-power nation many believed and wanted Britain still to be. For Churchill was a product of the late 19th century, and the last authentically Victorian figure to occupy 10 Downing Street.
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These precedents were much in the mind of the new Queen’s first prime minister, Winston Churchill, when he broadcast in February 1952 on the death of her father, King George VI.