A Norland trainee nanny in formal uniform. Graduates are not expected to wear their uniform once they start working for a family, unless requested for a special occasion.
Norland College
A small college in the historic city of Bath, U.K., is the place Britain’s royal family calls when they need child care.
Norland, which was founded more than 130 years ago, puts candidates through a four-year academic and practical training program where they spend around 1,300 hours caring for young children and newborns.
At the christening of Princess Charlotte of Cambridge in 2015 — the second child of the Prince and Princess of Wales — nanny Maria Teresa Turrion Borrallo was photographed in a formal Norland uniform, speaking to the late Queen Elizabeth II.
Norland nannies — who earn a Bachelor of Arts degree in early childhood education and care, plus a diploma when they complete a year as a probationary nanny — are highly sought after and well paid. For every nanny who graduates, there are around 8 to 10 permanent jobs available via the Norland Agency.
Norlanders, as they are known after graduating, usually prefer to be known publicly by only their first names to protect the identities of the children in their care, as well as their employers.
But while training, they’re noticeable to residents of Bath thanks to their formal, brown uniforms — which have been likened to what Mary Poppins wore — a dress and hat for women, a suit for men, and a gender neutral option of trousers or a dress with a tweed jacket.
Alice, a Norland nanny who was raised in Bath, used to see the uniformed students on the bus when she was in high school, but at the time had “no idea” who they were, she told CNBC by phone. Knowing that she wanted to work with children, Alice explored teaching via a school internship, but felt a less structured setting would better suit her.
Students at Norland College, whose uniform has been likened to Mary Poppins’ outfit.
Norland College
“I just felt like I could give those children so much one-on-one time to develop … to find their excitement for life [and] follow their interests,” she told CNBC.
Norland was established in 1892 by educator Emily Ward, who leaned on the teachings of Friedrich Fröbel, a pioneer in early childhood education who introduced the concept of the kindergarten and focused on the idea of the child as an individual with unique needs and abilities.
“You are learning everything there possibly is to know about childcare,” Alice said. “The degree is focusing heavily on the psychology of children and their learning, and the diploma is everything practical that you could experience in the family home,” she added. The program also includes practical learning outside a home, such as how to control a car in poor or dangerous conditions.
After graduation, a live-in Norland nanny working around 60 hours a week with one to two years of experience can expect to earn up to £41,500 (around $50,000) in London, according to Norland’s website, while a nanny with eight or more years’ experience working outside the U.K. can earn up to £124,000.
Alice has more than a decade’s experience as a nanny, starting her a career with a military family in the U.K., where the father was deployed in Afghanistan.
Her longest role was in New York City, where she looked after a girl and her twin siblings for nine years, starting her job when the twins were 18 months old and the girl was three. Their parents worked in real estate, and Alice was in sole charge of the children from 7 a.m to 7 p.m.
“One really, really important tip for any … parent is every child is different and grows and learns at different speeds,” Alice told CNBC.
Norland nannies complete more than 1,300 hours of child care during their training.
Norland College
“It’s very easy, especially for a first-time parent with a baby to think oh, well, my baby isn’t crawling yet. Why are all of these other mums telling me that their baby is crawling?” she said.
“But one child who isn’t crawling might be able to build a tower of blocks sitting up,” she added.
“Don’t compare other babies, just go with what works for you to keep the child happy and healthy,” she said.
Sleep is an obvious concern for carers of small children, who nap at various times of day. Alice is currently looking after a 10-month-old girl, an age where sleep regression — when a child has trouble falling asleep or staying asleep — is common, she said.
“If they’re not getting enough sleep in the day, they’re probably not going to be sleeping at night.”
Every child will have a different sleep routine, and Alice recommends a consistent approach to comforting a crying baby. “What I would always say is, go in, ‘shhh’ them, put your hand on their tummy to let them know you’re there, but try not to speak to them,” she said.
Prince George’s nanny, Maria Teresa Turrion Borrallo, in a formal Norland uniform, talks to Queen Elizabeth II at the Christening of Princess Charlotte of Cambridge on July 5, 2015.
Chris Jackson | Getty Images
“Babies are like adults who wake up in the night. Most of the time we go straight back to sleep. But sometimes, you just can’t get back to sleep. And that’s so frustrating for us as adults, let alone as babies [for whom] the only communication … is crying,” she said.
Alice described her role for a child having a tantrum as a “safe space.” “I’m on the floor around them … to give them some comfort while they’re going through it,” she said.
“With a child who has started to communicate verbally, they don’t want to listen to what you have to say, that’s not the right time to be talking about it,” she said. Instead, she suggested, speak to them afterward, when they’re in a better frame of mind.
If a child is doing something you don’t want them to do, consider “redirecting behaviors,” Alice said.
“If they are throwing a ball at the wall, and you really don’t want them to be marking the wall … [you can say], ‘why don’t we play a game of who can get this ball in the saucepan?’” she said.
“Redirecting the same behaviors instead of a constant ‘no, don’t do that,’ I have found in my experience, children will respond much better to,” Alice said.
Making sure you respond to children regardless of their behavior is also important.
If you’re cooking dinner and a child wants to play, “You can say, ‘give me five minutes and let’s throw the ball in the saucepan.’ … That might not necessarily work the first time, but they will know that you will always come back to them,” Alice said.
“If you’re not giving them the attention elsewhere, but you are giving it when you don’t like them doing something, they’re going to really focus on those behaviors,” she added.
Norland students have a practical uniform for child-care activities.
Norland College
If you have a child who refuses to get dressed, let them choose their outfits.
“That gives them the feeling of control,” Alice said. “But really, you’re you’re saying [these are] the warm weather outfits that you can wear, so you’re keeping them safe, while so allowing them to be in control,” she added.
If a child’s behavior is dangerous or harmful, such as if a toddler attempts to bite another child, try to understand that this comes from “frustration, or it’s curiosity,” Alice said. Ask “How do you think that made this other child feel when you bit him?”
“They don’t necessarily have the words to say how that made them feel. But then you say … I think that probably made him really sad, that probably really hurt him, I don’t think you would like it,” she said.
Also suggest that if they feel like biting again, say, “Maybe let’s get an apple that you can bite into or a pillow or a block.”
“I don’t really like to label a child as ‘naughty’,” Alice said, and she doesn’t use the “naughty step” as a punishment for little children or send an older child to their room.
“If they are in that moment where they just cannot regulate their emotions, you say, right, I understand you’re upset. I’m going to do something else. When you’ve had time to calm yourself down … we can talk,” she said.
Other tips include being consistent and as good as your word.
Time on devices such as iPads can be negotiated by setting limits or allowing only educational games, Alice said.
To limit screen time, say “Sorry, we can’t do that today. Let me plan some time for tomorrow,” Alice suggested, or “Why don’t you play that game for five minutes and then we will turn it off.”
Settling a child into school is often done gradually, with shorter days to start with. Reassure them that they will make friends there, and try to have playdates with classmates before school starts, Alice said.
“Maybe find out what they’re doing on the first day, so you can say [for example]: ‘Let me know how the painting goes when I pick you up. I can’t wait to hear about this.’”
Alice also said to do something fun after their first day or week at school, like going to a favorite playground or to a movie they’d like to see.
Alice acknowledged that being a nanny is different from being a working parent. “You have much more patience because it’s your job,” she said of her role.
During a Wednesday trip to the City of London, King Charles III delivered a speech that touched on an array of serious issues, from climate change to global unrest and other problems facing the UK. Despite the somber mood of his address, he did find an opportunity to poke fun at the issues he faced with fountain pens soon after his September 2022 accession to the throne.
While speaking about the various sources of strength that the nation can draw on, he mentioned the “healing” power of humor. “The British sense of humor is world-renowned. It is not what we do. It is who we are,” he said. “Our ability to laugh at ourselves is one of our great national characteristics. Just as well, you may say, given some of the vicissitudes I have faced with frustratingly failing fountain pens this past year!”
Just two days after the death of the queen, Charles was filmed as he frantically gestured at a fountain pen as he tried to sign the Accession Protocol, which made his role as the head of the Commonwealth official. The footage made it to the Internet and became one of the first viral moments of his reign. At a signing ceremony in Northern Ireland a few days later, he complained about a leaky pen as he passed it along to his wife. “Oh, God, I hate this,” and the footage once again went viral.
Within weeks, even Charles was in on the joke, laughing as he contended with a fountain pen during his first official engagement after the death of Queen Elizabeth II. “These things are so temperamental,” he said as he passed the pen to his wife.
On Wednesday, Charles delivered his speech during a dinner at the Manor House, the official residence of the City of London’s Lord Mayor. On the visit to the square-mile area which is technically not governed by the monarch, he took part in a longstanding tradition called the Temple Bar ceremony, where the Lord Mayor presents the monarch with the Pearl Sword. At the beginning of the address, he also joked that unlike his ancestors, the Plantagenets, he would not be collecting a “grant of tonnage and poundage” as taxation on the visit.
He went on to say that the last year has made him think about the qualities that make the UK unique. “I have often described the United Kingdom as a ‘community of communities’; an island nation in which our shared values are the force which holds us together, reminding us that there is far, far more that unites us than divides us,” he said. He later described those shared values as “deep wells on which we can draw” to “raise hope, shared purpose and, above all, a genuine togetherness that will see us through good times and bad.”
After a planned trip was canceled earlier this year, King Charles III and Queen Camilla finally kicked off their state visit to France on Wednesday. Earlier this month, sources told Vanity Fair that the tour—and a planned speech in front of the nation’s parliament to be delivered in French—is meant to emphasize the closeness of the Anglo-French relationship. But the day’s events showed off just how close their majesties have grown to President Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte in a personal sense.
When both couples exited the Élysée Palace soon after the king and queen’s arrival, Brigitte escorted Camilla, wearing a pink dress and matching jacket by Fiona Clare, down the carpeted stairs hand-in-hand. Then, at a ceremony of remembrance and wreath laying at the Arc de Triomphe, the king and Macron stood side-by-side and talked excitedly.
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Later, the royal family’s social media accounts shared a photo from the event that shows Macron’s hand on the king’s arm, with both men smiling. Following the wreath-laying, the couples returned to the Élysée Palace, where Charles and Macron took a bilateral meeting.
On Wednesday night, the Palace of Versailles became the site for a state banquet with a black-tie dress code—which meant there were no sashes and no tiaras. Camilla arrived in a navy Dior dress and a necklace with a special nod to her late mother-in-law, Queen Elizabeth II. In 1947, King George VI bought a sapphire necklace and earrings set for his daughter, who was then still a princess, from Carrington & Co. After she ascended to the throne, she had the necklace shortened and turned one of the larger stones into a detachable pendant that could also be worn as a pin. Often called the George VI Victorian Suite, the gems became a favorite choice of the queen for formal events and state dinners.
Also on the guest list were a few celebrities beloved by British and French audiences. Before their majesties’ arrival, Sir Mick Jagger walked the carpet with his partner Melanie Hamrick, and Hugh Grant arrived with his wife, Anna Elisabet Eberstein.Charlotte Gainsbourg wore a long dress with a rolled collar and a slit up the side.
According to the Telegraph, the night’s menu included lobster, poached Bresse chicken, and a raspberry dessert, all served in the palace’s iconic Hall of Mirrors.
Prince Harry may have exited his role as a working royal in January 2020, when he and wife Meghan Markledropped their bombshell news and moved abroad, but the royal family was still, undeniably, his family.
The second-born son of King Charles IIIreportedly commemorated the one-year anniversary of the death of his grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, with a private visit to her burial site on Friday.
While in the U.K. for a Thursday evening engagement at the WellChild Awards in London, Harry took Friday to visit King George VI Memorial Chapel at St. George’s Chapel in Windsor, where his grandmother is interred alongside her husband Prince Philip, sister Princess Margaret, and parents King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother.
The late queen died September 8, 2022, at the age of 96. Charles, who became king when she died, broke with tradition and released a statement on Friday mourning the loss of his mother.
“In marking the first anniversary of Her late Majesty’s death and my Accession, we recall with great affection her long life, devoted service and all she meant to so many of us,” read the statement in full. “I am deeply grateful, too, for the love and support that has been shown to my wife and myself during this year as we do our utmost to be of service to you all.”
Charles and Queen Camilla attended a service Friday morning at the same church the Queen visited regularly while in Balmoral, with plans to follow in Elizabeth’s footsteps and spend Ascension Day at Sandringham, as she did every year. Her father, King George VI, died at that royal residence. Queen Elizabeth died at Balmoral.
At Thursday’s WellChild Awards, Harry spoke about his grandmother on stage. He had been set to present at the 2022 event as well, but had to cancel after receiving reports of the Queen’s ill health.
“As you know, I was unable to attend the awards last year as my grandmother passed away,” he said onstage. “As you also probably know, she would have been the first person to insist that I still come to be with you all instead of going to her. And that’s precisely why I know, exactly one year on, she is looking down on all of us tonight, happy we’re together continuing to spotlight such an incredible community.”
In March, Princess Kate did her first major event with the Irish Guards since taking over Prince William’s role as the honorary Colonel of the regiment, and in a speech at the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Aldershot, the prince called his wife “Colonel Catherine.” On Friday, Buckingham Palace unveiled a few new military patronages for the Princess of Wales, and it included another opportunity to use the new nickname now that Kate is taking over for King Charles III as Colonel-in-Chief of the 1st Dragoon Guards.
Along with new roles for the king, Queen Camilla, William, Prince Edward, Princess Anne, and Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh, the palace also announced that Kate now Commodore-in-Chief of the Fleet Air Arm and Royal Honorary Air Commodore for Royal Air Force Coningsby, a base in Lincolnshire. Prince Andrew was formerly the Commodore-in-Chief for the Fleet Air Arm until he was stripped of his military patronages after settling a lawsuit with Jeffrey Epstein survivor Virginia Roberts Giuffre for a reported $12 million, while the role at RAF Coningsby previously belonged to William.
In their statement, the palace said, “The new appointments will continue to reflect the close relationship between the Armed Forces and the Royal Family in His Majesty’s reign.” The announcement also noted that the king is taking over eight military roles that formerly belonged to Queen Elizabeth II, including the role as sponsor of the HMS Queen Elizabeth, a World War I-era warship named for the 16th century queen. William is taking on three roles from his father: Colonel-in-Chief for The Mercian Regiment, Colonel-in-Chief for The Army Air Corps (the regiment Prince Harry once served in), and Royal Honorary Air Commodore, RAF Valley.
Though the appointments are largely ceremonial, Kate has used them as an opportunity to get involved in training with the troops she represents. Last summer, she shared pictures from a time she suited up in full military garb to spend Armed Forces Day with a British Army regiment, and in 2021, she abseiled and cycled with a group of teenagers on an air force junior training course.
President Joe Biden and King Charles III on Monday met for the first time since the British monarch ascended to the throne, with the US president visiting Windsor Castle for all the pomp and circumstance that comes with a royal meeting.
Biden arrived to inspect an honor guard formed of the Prince of Wales Company of the Welsh Guards – with hundreds of uniformed troops, and its military band – positioned on the grassy quadrangle before a tent. The band played “God Save the King” upon the monarch’s arrival and “The Star-Spangled Banner” upon Biden’s entrance.
The moment marked Biden’s second trip to Windsor Castle since taking office – the president met the King’s mother, Queen Elizabeth II, at her home just outside London in June 2021. The Queen met 12 US presidents spanning her reign, all but President Lyndon Johnson. The president said at the time the Queen wanted to know about Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom Biden was meeting in Switzerland days after their visit, and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Biden said he wished he could have spoken to the Queen for longer. “She was very generous,” he told reporters.
This latest meeting with Charles was a closely watched moment for how the King balances his traditionally apolitical role with a cause he is passionate about that has become a signature priority. Biden has called climate change “the existential threat to human existence as we know it.”
Biden, Sullivan told reporters, “has huge respect for the king’s commitment on the climate issue in particular. He has been a clarion voice on this issue and more than that, has been an actor – someone who’s mobilized action and effort. And so the president comes at this with enormous goodwill at this relationship,” Sullivan said, calling Monday’s engagement an opportunity to “deepen the personal bond” and “harness their shared interest in trying to drive climate progress and climate action.”
Biden, King Charles and special envoy for climate John Kerry met with private sector company leaders at a climate event. The group discussed barriers to private investment, and Biden was expected to encourage those in attendance to “step up to their responsibilities,” while also highlighting public investment, Sullivan said.
In keeping with US tradition, Biden did not travel to London for the coronation, but first lady Dr. Jill Biden and granddaughter Finnegan Biden attended the ceremony. Both the president and first lady did make the trip across the Atlantic for the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II last year.
Biden arrived at 10 Downing Street and was greeted by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak ahead of discussions on a range of issues, including Ukraine, a topic on which the two leaders have closely coordinated. Biden recounted all of the places he’s met with Sunak – from San Diego, California, to Belfast, Northern Ireland, to Hiroshima, Japan, to Washington, DC – six times in the six months since the prime minister took office.
“Couldn’t be meeting with a closer friend or greater ally. Got a lot to talk about,” Biden said, adding, “Our relationship is rock solid. … And I look forward to our discussions.”
Sunak welcomed Biden back to 10 Downing Street, which he was visiting for the first time as president, saying he is “very privileged and fortunate to have you here.”
He said they would be strengthening cooperation on joint economic security, as well as discussing the NATO alliance.
“We head from here to NATO in Vilnius, where we stand as two of the firmest allies in that alliance and I know we want to do everything we can to strengthen Euro-Atlantic security. Great pleasure to have you here,” Sunak said.
Their meeting came after the US announced Friday that it will be sending cluster munitions to Ukraine for the first time, a rare topic on which the US and United Kingdom publicly disagree. The UK, Sunak told reporters Saturday, is “signatory to a convention which prohibits the production or use of cluster munitions and discourages their use.”
Sunak continued, “We will continue to do our part to support Ukraine against Russia’s illegal and unprovoked invasion, but we’ve done that by providing heavy battle tanks and most recently long-range weapons, and hopefully all countries can continue to support Ukraine.”
National security adviser Jake Sullivan downplayed any concern that Biden’s decision to send cluster munitions would present any “fracture” with allied countries that oppose the use of such equipment, suggesting that Sunak was stating a “legal position” as he highlighted broader US-UK unity.
“The prime minister stated the UK’s legal position, that they are a signatory to the Oslo Convention. The United States is not. That being a signatory means discouraging the use of these weapons. He fulfilled his legal obligation, but I think you will find Prime Minister Sunak and President Biden on the same page strategically on Ukraine, in lockstep on the bigger picture of what we’re trying to accomplish and as united as ever, both in this conflict and writ large,” Sullivan told reporters aboard Air Force One Sunday.
Sullivan noted that the US has not received any negative feedback from NATO allies regarding the decision.
“That will be repeated, in my view, with all the leaders of the alliance. I do not think you will see fracture, division, or disunity… as a result of this decision. Even though many allies – the signatories to Oslo – are in a position where they themselves cannot say, ‘We are for cluster munitions.’ But we have heard nothing from people saying this cast doubt on our commitment, this cast doubt on coalition unity, or this cast doubt on our belief that the United States is playing a vital and positive role as leader of this coalition in Ukraine,” he said.
A Defense Department release on the US’ latest equipment drawdown also said that the decision was made following “extensive consultations with Congress and our Allies and partners.”
In a readout following the meeting, the White House said Biden and Sunak “reviewed preparations for the upcoming NATO Summit in Vilnius.”
“They reaffirmed their steadfast support for Ukraine in the face of Russia’s ongoing aggression,” the White House said, adding the two leaders also discussed last month’s newly announced economic partnership and developments in Northern Ireland, including “efforts to ensure continued progress there.”
Later Monday, the president departs London for Vilnius, Lithuania, where NATO leaders will gather for critical meetings amid the war in Ukraine and last month’s failed coup attempt in Russia, posing the biggest threat to global stability for the alliance in recent history.
Following the NATO Summit, Biden travels to Helsinki, Finland, where he will offer a notable show of support to Nordic countries during a summit with the leaders of Finland, Sweden, Norway, Iceland and Denmark.
London — King Charles III on Saturday took part in the first Trooping the Colour of his reign, a centuries-old ceremony that honors the official birthday of the British sovereign.
The 260-year-old tradition marks the birthday of a reigning monarch, the technical head of the British Armed Forces. It’s different than 74-year-old Charles’ own birthday, which is Nov. 14.
Spectacle was the order of the day as thousands of loyal subjects joined Charles in a series of colorful tributes.
King Charles III during the Trooping the Colour ceremony at Horse Guards Parade in London. June 17, 2023.
Aaron Chown/PA Images via Getty Images
For the first time in more than three decades, Charles revived a royal tradition by riding on horseback during the ceremony, flanked by royal colonels: his son, Prince William, his youngest brother, Prince Edward, and his sister, Princess Anne.
It was a poignant event, the first trooping ceremony for someone other than the late Queen Elizabeth II in seven decades.
In 2022, Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee — marking 70 years on the throne — was one of the largest Trooping ceremonies in recent memory. It would be the last time she would inspect the hundreds of horses and soldiers as they perform battlefield drills to military music, an annual hallmark of Britain’s hard power.
As part of the ceremony, senior members of the royal family gather together on the Buckingham Palace balcony for what is known as the fly past, which this year was an impressive display of aerial might.
However, there were a few notable absences, including Charles’ brother, Prince Andrew, and his son, Prince Harry, and Harry’s wife, Meghan Markle, who are no longer senior working royals. Charles’ coronation last month also came with no formal roles for Andrew or Harry.
The Trooping ceremony has not always gone as smoothly as it did Saturday. In 1981, Elizabeth was shot at from a distance. However, that did not stop her from riding on horseback at the event for another five years.
She only opted to ride in a carriage instead beginning in 1987, after her beloved horse, Burmese, a gift from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, retired.
During the final rehearsal for Charles’ Trooping ceremony — because of the unusually high temperatures — at least three guardsmen, dressed in their heavy tunics and bearskin hats, fainted from the heat.
But on Saturday, the weather cooperated and the event went smoothly.
Prince Harry and his wife Meghan, the duke and duchess of Sussex, “stepped back” from their royal duties in 2020. But last month Prince Harry attended his father’s coronation ceremony…it was an awkward appearance for the 38-year-old prince after the release earlier this year of his searing memoir “Spare” – the title a nod to his backup role in the line of succession. As we first reported in January, the book is a stunning break with royal protocol. It’s a deeply personal account of Prince Harry’s decades-long struggle with grief after the death of his mother Princess Diana, and a revealing look at his fractured relationships with his father, King Charles, his stepmother, Queen Camilla, and his brother Prince William…the heir to his spare.
Anderson Cooper: You write about a contentious meeting you had with him in 2021. You said, “I looked at Willy, really looked at him maybe for the first time since we were boys. I took it all in, his familiar scowl, which had always been his default in dealings with me, his alarming baldness, more advanced than my own, his famous resemblance to Mummy which was fading with time, with age.” That’s pretty cutting.
Prince Harry: I don’t see it as cutting at all. Um, you know, my brother and I love each other. I love him deeply. There has been a lot of pain between the two of us, especially the last six years. None of anything I’ve written, anything that I’ve included is ever intended to hurt my family. But it does give a full picture of the situation as we were growing up, and also squashes this idea that somehow my wife was the one that destroyed the relationship between these two brothers.
Anderson Cooper: I think so many people around the world watched you and your brother grow up and feel like you two were inseparable. And yet in reading the book, you have lived separate lives from the time your mom died.
Prince Harry: Uh-huh (AFFIRM)
Anderson Cooper: Even when you were in the same school, in high school…
Prince Harry: Sibling rivalry.
Anderson Cooper: Your brother told you, “Pretend we don’t know each other.”
Prince Harry: Yeah, and at the time it hurt. I couldn’t make sense of it. I was like, “What do you mean? We’re now at the same school. Like, I haven’t seen you for ages, now we get to hang out together.” He’s like, “No, no, no, when we’re at school we don’t know each other.” And I took that personally. But yes, you’re absolutely right, you hit the nail on the head. Like, we had a very similar traumatic experience, and then we– we dealt with it two very different ways.
Prince Harry
Anderson Cooper: William had tried to talk to you occasionally about your mom, but, as a child you could not– you couldn’t respond.
Prince Harry: For me, it was never a case of, “I don’t want to talk about it with you.” I just don’t know how to talk about it. I never ever thought that maybe talking about it with my brother or with anybody else at that point would be therapeutic.
In August 1997, Harry and William were vacationing in Scotland with their father. Harry was 12, William, 15. They were asleep at Balmoral Castle on August 31st, when Harry was awakened by his father who told him his mother had been in a car crash in Paris.
Anderson Cooper: In the book you write, “He says, ‘They tried, darling boy. I’m afraid she didn’t make it.’ These phrases remain in my mind like darts on a board,” you say. Did– did you cry?
Prince Harry: No. No. Never shed a single tear at that point. I was in shock, you know? Twelve years old, sort of 7:00– 7:30 in the morning early. Your father comes in, sits on your bed, puts his hand on your knee and tells you “There’s been an accident.” I– I couldn’t believe.
Anderson Cooper: And you write in the book that, “Pa didn’t hug me. He wasn’t great at showing emotions under normal circumstances. But his hand did fall once more on my knee and he said, ‘It’s going to be okay.’” But after that, nothing was okay for a long time.
Harry says his memories of the next few days are fragmented. But he does remember this: greeting mourners outside Kensington Palace in London the day before his mother’s funeral.
Anderson Cooper: When you see those videos now, what do you think?
Prince Harry: I think it’s bizarre, because I see William and me smiling. I remember the guilt that I felt.
Anderson Cooper: Guilt about?
Prince Harry: The fact that the people that we were meeting were showing more emotion than we were showing, maybe more emotion than we even felt.
Anderson Cooper: They were crying, but you weren’t.
Prince Harry: There was a lotta tears. I talk about how wet people’s hands were. And I couldn’t understand it at first.
Anderson Cooper: Their hands were wet from crying–
Prince Harry: Their hands were wet from wiping their own tears away. I do remember one of the strangest parts to it was taking flowers from people and then placing those flowers with the rest of them. As if I was some sort of middle person for their grief. And that really stood out for me.
The funeral, on a cool September morning, was watched by as many as 2.5 billion people around the world. Perhaps the most indelible image: Prince Harry and his brother, walking behind their mother’s casket on its way to Westminster Abbey.
Anderson Cooper: What do you remember about that walk?
Prince Harry: How quiet it was. I remember, the occasional wail and screaming of someone. I remember the horse hooves on the road.
Prince Harry: The bridles of the horses, the gun carriage, the wheels, the occasional gravel stone underneath your shoe. But mainly the– the silence.
After the service, Princess Diana’s body was brought for burial to her family’s ancestral estate, Althorp.
Prince Harry: Once my mother’s coffin actually went into the ground, that was the first time that I actually cried. Yeah, there was never another time.
Anderson Cooper: All through your teenage years, you did– you didn’t cry about it?
Prince Harry: No.
Anderson Cooper: You didn’t believe she was dead.
Prince Harry: Unh-uh (NEGATIVE). For a long– for a long time, I just refused to accept that she was– she was gone. Um, part of, you know, she would never do this to us, but also part of, maybe this is all part of a plan.
Anderson Cooper: I mean, you really believed that maybe she had just decided to disappear for a time?
Prince Harry: For a time, and then that she would call us and that we would go and join her, yeah.
Anderson Cooper: How long did you believe that?
Prince Harry: Years. Many, many years. And William and I talked about it as well. He had– he had um, similar thoughts.
Anderson Cooper: You write in the book, “I’d often say it to myself first thing in the morning, ‘Maybe this is the day. Maybe this is the day that she’s gonna reappear.’”
Prince Harry: Yeah, hope. I had huge amounts of hope
He held onto that hope into adulthood. When Harry was 20, he asked to see the police report about the crash that killed his mother, her boyfriend Dodi Al-Fayed and their driver Henri Paul while they were being pursued by paparazzi in a Paris tunnel.
Anderson Cooper: The files contained photographs of the crash scene. Why did you want to see it?
Prince Harry: Mainly proof. Proof that she was in the car. Proof that she was injured. And proof that the very paparazzi that chased her into the tunnel were the ones that were taking photographs– photographs of her lying half dead on the back seat of the car.
Anderson Cooper: You write in the book, “I hadn’t been aware before this moment,” talking about looking at the pictures of the crash scene, “that the last thing Mummy saw on this earth was a flash bulb.”
Prince Harry: Yep
Anderson Cooper: That’s what you saw in the pictures?
Prince Harry: Uh-huh (AFFIRM) (good face). Well they were – the pictures showed the reflection of a group of photographs taking photographs through the window, and the reflection on the window was– was them.
He only saw some of the crash photos, his private secretary and advisor dissuaded him from looking at the rest.
Prince Harry: All I saw was the back of my mum’s head– slumped on the back seat. There were other more gruesome photographs, but I will be eternally grateful to him for denying me the ability to inflict pain on myself by seeing that. Because that’s the kinda stuff that sticks in your mind forever.
Harry says he believed his mother might stillbe alive until he was 23 and visited Paris for the first time.
Anderson Cooper: You told your driver, “I want to go to the tunnel where my mom died?”
Prince Harry: I wanted to see whether it was possible driving at the speed that Henri Paul was driving that you could lose control of a car and plow into a pillar killing almost everybody in that car. I need to take this journey. I need to ride the same route–
Anderson Cooper: The same tunnel, the same speed–
Prince Harry: All of it.
Anderson Cooper: –your mother was going.
Prince Harry: Yup. Because William and I had already been told, “The event was like a bicycle chain. If you remove one of those chains, the end result would not have happened.” And the paparazzi chasing was part of that. But yet, everybody got away with it.
Harry writes he and his brother weren’t satisfied with the results of a 2006 investigation by London’s Metropolitan Police, concluding Diana’s driver, Henri Paul, had been drinking and the crash was a “tragic accident.”
Prince Harry: William and I considered reopening the inquest. Because there were so many gaps and so many holes in it. Which just didn’t add up and didn’t make sense.
Anderson Cooper: Would you still like to do that?
Prince Harry: I don’t even know if it’s an option now. But no, I think– brrrr– would I like to do that now? It’s a hell of a question, Anderson.
Anderson Cooper: Do you feel you have the answers that you need to have about what happened to your mom?
Prince Harry: Truth be known, no. I don’t think I do. And I don’t think my brother does either. I don’t think the world does. Um – do I need any more than I already know? No. I don’t think it would change much.
Harry now says it wasn’t until he served in combat with the British Army in Afghanistan that he finally found purpose and a sense of normalcy.
Prince Harry: My military career saved me in many regard.
Anderson Cooper: How so?
Prince Harry: Got me out of the spotlight from the– from the U.K. press. I was able to focus on a purpose larger than myself, to be wearing the same uniform as everybody else, to feel normal for the first time in my life. And accomplish some of the biggest challenges that I ever had. You know, I was training to become an Apache helicopter pilot. You don’t get a pass for being a prince.
Anderson Cooper: The Apache doesn’t give a crap about who you are.
Prince Harry: No, there’s– there’s no prince autopilot button you (LAUGH) can press and just whff– takes you away. I was a really good candidate for the military. I was a young man in my 20s suffering from shock. But I was now in the front seat of an Apache shooting it, flying it, monitoring four radios simultaneously and being there to save and help anybody that was on the– on the ground with a radio screaming, “We need support, we need air support.” That was my calling. I felt healing from that weirdly.
Anderson Cooper: And that multi-tasking the brain work of that, that felt good to you?
Prince Harry: It felt like I was turning pain into a purpose. I didn’t have the awareness at the time that I was living my life in adrenaline, and that was the case from age 12, from the moment that I was told that my mom had died.
Anderson Cooper: you say, “War didn’t begin in Afghanistan. It began in August 1997.”
Prince Harry: Yeah. The war for me unknowingly was when my mum died.
Anderson Cooper: Who were you fighting?
Prince Harry: Myself. I had a huge amount of frustration and blame towards the British press for their part in it.
Anderson Cooper: Even at 12 at that young you were feeling that toward the British press?
Prince Harry: Yeah. I mean, it was obvious to us as kids the British press’ part in our mother’s misery and I had a lot of anger inside of me that luckily, I never expressed to anybody. But I resorted to drinking heavily. Because I wanted to numb the feeling, or I wanted to distract myself from how… whatever I was thinking. And I would, you know, resort to drugs as well.
Harry admits he smoked pot and used cocaine. And he writes that in his late 20s he felt “hopeless” and “lost.”
Prince Harry: There was this weight on my chest that I felt for so many years that I was never able to cry. So I was constantly trying to find a way to cry, but– in even sitting on my sofa and going over as many memories as I could muster up about my mum. And sometimes I watched videos online.
Anderson Cooper: Of your mom?
Prince Harry: Of my mum.
Anderson Cooper: Hoping to cry?
Prince Harry: Yup.
Anderson Cooper: And you couldn’t.
Prince Harry: I couldn’t.
He sought out help from a therapist for the first time seven years ago. And he reveals he’s also tried more experimental treatments.
Anderson Cooper: You write in the book about psychedelics, Ayahuasca, psilocybin, mushrooms.
Prince Harry: I would never recommend people to do this recreationally. But doing it with the right people if you are suffering from a huge amount of loss, grief or trauma, then these things have a way of working as a medicine.
Anderson Cooper: They showed you something. What did they show you?
Prince Harry: For me, they cleared the windscreen, the windshield the misery of loss. They cleared away this idea that I had in my head that– that my mother, that I needed to cry to prove to my mother that I missed her. When in fact, all she wanted was for me to be happy.
Prince Harry says he’s found that happiness with his wife in California, but he’s far from at peace with the royal family.
As we first reported in January, Prince Harry’s memoir “Spare” is anything but spare in its unflattering portrayal of the royal family, especially his stepmother Camilla. She married then-Prince Charles in 2005, though the two had been romantically involved on and off for decades. When Princess Diana famously referred to Camilla as the third person in her marriage, the British tabloids ran with it, and Prince Harry has never forgotten.Prince Harry: She was the villain. She was the third person in their marriage. She needed to rehabilitate her image.
Anderson Cooper: You and your brother both directly asked your dad not to marry Camilla?
Prince Harry: Yes.
Anderson Cooper: Why?
Prince Harry: We didn’t think it was necessary. We thought that it was gonna cause more harm than good and that if he was now with his person, that– surely that’s enough. Why go that far when you don’t necessarily need to? We wanted him to be happy. And we saw how happy he was with her. So, at the time, it was, “Ok.”
Anderson Cooper: You wrote that she started a campaign in the British press to pave the way for a marriage. And you wrote, “I even wanted Camilla to be happy. Maybe she’d be less dangerous if she was happy.” How was she dangerous?
Prince Harry: Because of the need for her to rehabilitate her image.
Anderson Cooper: That made her dangerous?
Prince Harry: That made her dangerous because of the connections that she was forging within the British press. And there was open willingness on both sides to trade of information. And with a family built on hierarchy, and with her, on the way to being Queen consort, there was gonna be people or bodies left in the street because of that.
Harry says over the years, he was one of those bodies. He accuses Camilla and even his father, at times, of using him or William to get better tabloid coverage for themselves. Prince Harry writes, Camilla, “sacrificed me on her personal P.R. altar.”
Prince Harry: If you are led to believe, as a member of the family, that being on the front page, having positive headlines, positive stories written about you, is going to improve your reputation or increase the chances of you being accepted as monarch by the British public, then that’s what you’re gonna do.
In his book, Harry writes that when he introduced Meghan Markle to his family in 2016, his father initially took a liking to her, but William was skeptical, disdainfully referring to Meghan as “an American actress.” Though Harry doesn’t specify who – he says other members of the royal family were uneasy as well.
Prince Harry: Right from the beginning, before they even had a chance to get to know her. And the U.K. press jumped on that. And here we are.
Anderson Cooper: And what was that based on, that mistrust?
Prince Harry: The fact that she was American, an actress, divorced, Black, biracial with a Black mother. Those were just four of the typical stereotypes that is– becomes a feeding frenzy for the British press.
Anderson Cooper: But all those things within the family also were– were sources of mistrust,
Prince Harry: Yes. You know, my family read the tabloids, you know? It’s laid out– at breakfast when everyone comes together. So, whether you walk around saying you believe it or not, it’s still– it’s still leaving an imprint in your mind. So if you have that judgment based on a stereotype right at the beginning, it’s very, very hard to get over that. And a large part of it for the family, but also the British press and numerous other people is, like, “He’s changed. She must be a witch. He’s changed.” As opposed to yeah, I did change, and I’m really glad I changed. Because rather than getting drunk, falling out of clubs, taking drugs, I had now found the love of my life, and I now had the opportunity to start a family with her.
Soon after their relationship became public, Harry insisted on putting out a statement condemning some of the tabloid coverage of Meghan and what he called quote “the racial undertones of comment pieces.”
Anderson Cooper: You write that your dad and your brother, William, were furious with you for doing that. Why?
Prince Harry: They felt as though it made them look bad. They felt as though they didn’t have a chance or weren’t able to do that for their partners. What Meghan had to go through was similar in some part to what Kate and what Camilla went through, very different circumstances. But then you add in the race element, which was what the press– British press jumped on straight away. I went into this incredibly naïve. I had no idea the British press were so bigoted. Hell, I was probably bigoted before–
Anderson Cooper: You– you–
Prince Harry: –the relationship with– with Meghan.
Anderson Cooper: You think you were bigoted before the relationship with Meghan.
Prince Harry: I– I don’t know. Put it this way, I didn’t see what I now see.
They were married in May 2018, in a ceremony that seemed to promise a more modern and inclusive royal family — and given the titles duke and duchess of Sussex. But behind the scenes, according to Harry, William’s mistrust of Meghan only worsened.
Anderson Cooper: Did you ever try to meet with William and Kate to try to defuse the tension?
In early 2019, Harry writes, the rancor between William and him exploded at Harry’s cottage on the grounds of Kensington Palace.
Anderson Cooper: Your arguments with your brother became physical.
Prince Harry: It was a buildup of– frustration, I think, on his part. It was at a time where he was being told certain things by people within his office. And at the same time, he was consuming a lot of the tabloid press, a lot of the stories. And he had a few issues, which were based not on reality. And I was defending my wife. And he was coming for my wife– she wasn’t there at the time– but through the things that he was saying. I was defending myself. And we moved from one room into the kitchen. And his frustrations were growing, and growing, and growing. He was shouting at me. I was shouting back at him. It wasn’t nice. It wasn’t pleasant at all. And he snapped. And he pushed me to the floor.
Anderson Cooper: He knocked you over?
Prince Harry: He knocked me over. I landed on the dog bowl.
Anderson Cooper: You cut your back.
Prince Harry: Yeah. I cut my back. I didn’t know about it at the time. But, yeah, he– he apologized afterwards. It was a pretty nasty experience, but—
Anderson Cooper: He asked you not to tell anybody– not to tell Meghan?
Prince Harry: Yeah. And– and I wouldn’t have done. And, I didn’t until she– until she saw on the– on my back. She goes, “What’s that?” I was like, “Huh, what?” I actually didn’t know what she was talking about. I looked in the mirror. I was like, “Oh s***.” Well, ’cause I’d never s-I hadn’t seen it.
Meghan has said constant criticism and pressure led her in the winter of 2019 to contemplate suicide.
Prince Harry: The thing that’s terrified me the most is history repeating itself.
Anderson Cooper: You really feared that your wife, Meghan…
Prince Harry: Yes, I feared, I feared a lot that the end result, the fact that I lost my mum when I was 12 years old, could easily happen again to my wife.
In January 2020, Prince Harry and Meghan announced they intended to, in their words, step back as senior members of the royal family. They moved to California three months later. Then there was the headline-grabbing interview with Oprah Winfrey and a deal with Netflix worth a reported $100 million. Critics say the duke and duchess are cashing in on their royal titles while they still can.
Anderson Cooper: Why not renounce your titles as duke and duchess?
Prince Harry: And what difference would that make?
Anderson Cooper: One of the criticisms that you’ve received is that okay, fine, you wanna move to California, you wanna step back from the institutional role. Why be so public? Why reveal conversations you’ve had with your father or– with your brother? You say you tried to do this privately.
Prince Harry: And every single time I’ve tried to do it privately there have been briefings and leakings and planting of stories against me and my wife. You know, the family motto is never complain, never explain. But it’s just a motto. And it doesn’t really hold–
Anderson Cooper: There’s a lotta complaining and a lot of explaining.
Prince Harry: Endless–
Anderson Cooper: Private– being done in– through leaks.
Prince Harry: Through leaks.
Prince Harry continues to claim he would never leak against his family.
Prince Harry: So now, trying to speak a language that perhaps they understand, I will sit here and speak truth to you with the words that come out of my mouth, rather than using someone else, an unnamed source, to feed in lies or a narrative to a tabloid media that literally radicalizes its readers to then potentially cause harm to my family, my wife, my kids.
In December, the British tabloid The Sun published a vicious column about Meghan written by a TV host.
Anderson Cooper: He said, “I hate her. At night, I’m unable to sleep as I lie there, grinding my teeth and dreaming of the day where she is made to walk naked through the streets of every town in Britain while the crowds chant, ‘Shame,’ and throw lumps of excrement at her.” Did that surprise you?
Prince Harry: Did it surprise me? No. Is it shocking? Yes. I mean, thank you for proving our point.
Anderson Cooper: Has there been any response from the palace
Prince Harry: No. And there comes a point when silence is betrayal
Harry has been back in the United Kingdom. He was in London last September for a charity event when the palace announced his grandmother, the queen, was under medical supervision at Balmoral Castle in Scotland.
Prince Harry: I asked my brother– I said, “What are your plans? How are you and Kate getting up there?” And then, a couple of hours later, you know, all of the fam– family members that live within the Windsor and Ascot area were jumping on a plane together, a plane with 12, 14, maybe 16 seats.
Anderson Cooper: You were not invited on that plane?
Prince Harry: I was not invited.
By the time Harry got to Balmoral on his own, the queen was dead.
Prince Harry: I walked into the hall, and my aunt was there to greet me. And she asked me if I wanted to see her. I thought about it for about five seconds, thinking, “Is this a good idea?” And I was, like, “You know what? You can– you can do this. You– you need to say goodbye.” So I went upstairs, took my jacket off and walked in and just spent some time with her alone.
Anderson Cooper: Where was she?
Prince Harry: She was in her bedroom. I was actually– I was really happy for her. Because she’d finished life. She’d completed life, and her husband was– was waiting for her. And the two of them are buried together.
As they had 25 years earlier, Harry and William found themselves walking together, but apart, this time behind their grandmother’s casket.
Anderson Cooper: Do you speak to William now? Do you text?
Prince Harry: Currently, no. But I look forward to– I look forward to us being able to find peace. I want—
Anderson Cooper: How long has it been since you spoke?
Prince Harry: A while.
Anderson Cooper: Do you speak to your dad?
Prince Harry: We aren’t– we haven’t spoken for quite a while. No, not recently.
Anderson Cooper: Can you see a day when you would return as a full-time member of the royal family?
Prince Harry: No. I can’t see that happening.
Anderson Cooper: In the book, you called this, “A– full-scale rupture.” Can it be healed?
Prince Harry: Yes. The ball is very much in their court, but, you know, Meghan and I have continued to say that we will openly apologize for anything that we did wrong, but every time we ask that question, no one’s telling us sp– the specifics or anything. There needs to be a constructive conversation, one that can happen in private that doesn’t get leaked.
Anderson Cooper: I assume they would say, “Well, how can we trust you how do we know that you’re not gonna reveal whatever conversations we have in an interview somewhere?”
Prince Harry: This all started with them briefing, daily, against my wife with lies to the point of where my wife and I had to run away from our count– my country.
Anderson Cooper: It’s hard, I think, for anybody to imagine a family dynamic that is so “Game of Thrones” without dragons.
Prince Harry: I don’t watch “Game of Thrones,” but–
Anderson Cooper: Oh. Okay.
Prince Harry: –there’s def– but there’s definitely dragons. And that’s again the third party which is the British Press so ultimately without the British press as part of this, we would probably still be a fairly dysfunctional family, like, a lot are. But at the heart of it, there is a family, without question. Um – and I really look forward to having that family element back. I look forward to having a relationship with my brother. I look forward to having a relationship with my father and other members of my family.
Anderson Cooper: You want that?
Prince Harry: That’s all I’ve ever asked for.
We reached out to Buckingham Palace for comment back in January. The palace has still not made any official comment about Prince Harry’s book.
Produced by Draggan Mihailovich. Associate producer, Emily Cameron. Broadcast associate, Eliza Costas. Edited by Warren Lustig.
Anderson Cooper, anchor of CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360,” has contributed to 60 Minutes since 2006. His exceptional reporting on big news events has earned Cooper a reputation as one of television’s pre-eminent newsmen.
The FBI has disclosed a potential threat to Queen Elizabeth II during her 1983 trip to the United States. The documents were released this week on the FBI’s records website. Elizabeth died last September after a 70-year reign.
The queen’s West Coast visit with her husband, Prince Philip, included a stop in San Francisco in March 1983. CBS San Francisco reported that one document appears to detail a tip gathered around a month before that visit from San Francisco police regarding a phone call from “a man who claimed that his daughter had been killed in Northern Ireland by a rubber bullet.”
Four years earlier in 1979, IRA paramilitaries opposed to British rule in Northern Ireland killed Louis Mountbatten, the last colonial governor of India and an uncle of Philip, in a bomb attack.
According to the documents, the man said he was going to “attempt to harm Queen Elizabeth” by either dropping an object off the Golden Gate Bridge onto the queen’s royal yacht or trying to kill her during a visit to Yosemite National Park. The documents said the Secret Service intended to close the bridge’s walkways as the yacht drew near.
Queen Elizabeth ll makes a speech as President Ronald Reagan looks on during a banquet on March 3, 1983, in San Francisco.
Anwar Hussein/Getty Images
The names of the San Francisco police officer who received the phone call and the caller were redacted in the documents, which did not indicate whether precautions were taken at Yosemite or whether any arrests were made. A March 7, 1983, memo indicated the queen completed the U.S. visit “without incident” and that “no further investigation is warranted.”
A separate file among the documents, dated 1989, pointed out that while the FBI was unaware of any specific threats against the queen, “the possibility of threats against the British monarchy is ever present from the Irish Republican Army.”
In 1970, suspected IRA sympathizers unsuccessfully attempted to derail Elizabeth’s train west of Sydney, while in 1981 the IRA tried to bomb her on a visit to Shetland, off the northeast coast of Scotland.
In the same year, a mentally disturbed teenager fired a single shot toward the queen’s car during a visit to New Zealand. Christopher Lewis fired the shot as she toured the South Island city of Dunedin.
The botched attempt was covered up by police at the time and only came to light in 2018 when New Zealand’s Security Intelligence Service spy agency released documents following a media request.
Also in 1981, another teenager fired six blanks at Elizabeth during the monarch’s Trooping the Color birthday parade in central London.
The queen quickly calmed her startled horse and carried on while the teenager told soldiers who disarmed him he had “wanted to be famous.”
The following year, in one of the most famous security breaches of her reign, Michael Fagan managed to get into the queen’s bedroom and spent 10 minutes talking to her before she could raise the alarm.
The unemployed decorator had a few drinks and scaled the walls of Buckingham Palace, climbing up a drainpipe to enter the queen’s London residence.
He wandered into her bedroom and reportedly sat on the end of the bed for a chat with the perturbed monarch before a palace staffer lured him away with the promise of a shot of whisky.
The FBI documents detailed other security concerns involving the queen’s visits to various U.S. cities. When she attended a Baltimore Orioles game with President George H.W. Bush in May 1991, several dozen demonstrators in the park chanted slogans condemning Britain’s policy in Northern Ireland.
On September 8, 2022, after more than 70 years on the British throne, Elizabeth died at Balmoral Castle, her official residence in Scotland. She was 96.
During the coronation service for King Charles III and Queen Camilla on Saturday, one moment served to remind viewers of the family at the center of the ceremony: Near the service’s end, Prince William dropped to his knees and pledged an oath similar to the one his grandfather Prince Philip uttered at the 1953 coronation of his grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II. “I, William, Prince of Wales, pledge my loyalty to you and faith and truth I will bear unto you, as your liege man of life and limb,” he said. “So help me, God.”
In the audience three rows back sat Prince Harry, who had traveled from Los Angeles. He had kept the details of his trip so tightly under wraps, as cohosts Katie Nicholl and Erin Vanderhoof explain, that his family had to remove a place setting for him at their informal coronation luncheon when they realized that the spare was already long gone, having flown immediately back to California.
Despite the melancholy lingering over such tangled dynamics, the event went off without a hitch—not counting the rain.
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He did hint at his past as a senior royal with the emblem around his neck telegraphing his status as a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order, an award from the late Queen Elizabeth II for his personal service to the sovereign. On his medal bar, he wore his medals from the Golden, Diamond, and Platinum Jubilees, along with the medal he received for his tour of service in Afghanistan. But didn’t wear any of the ceremonial garb that he might have been entitled to had he not left his royal role. (Though you should note that this did not stop Prince Andrew, who wore the full regalia and blue velvet robe representing the Order of the Garter, despite his “retirement” in Fall 2019.)
Prince Andrew
Jeff Spicer/Getty Images
He exited the Abbey with Eugenie and Jack, and got into the backseat of a waiting car. His trip to the UK was reportedly supposed to be short, and a return trip to Los Angeles is expected to come soon. Harry traveled to his home country without his wife Meghan Markle, and his two children, Archie and Lilibet Mountbatten-Windsor. Archie is celebrating his fourth birthday on Saturday, and a friend of the couple told People that Meghan had planned a “low-key party at home” with her mother Doria Ragland. It is thought that Harry spend last night at Frogmore Cottage, the home that he and Meghan received as a gift from the late queen. They were recently asked to vacate it at the direction of the king.
Saturday’s coronation, the first in 70 years, will enter the history books, where the story of Harry, the prodigal prince who started a new life in Los Angeles, will become one important footnote. Someday—maybe soon, maybe years from now—we may learn more about the conversations that led Harry to agree to make an appearance in the Abbey, but until then, the day looks like an unsteady detente in a still-warring royal family.
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London CNN
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Britain’s King Charles III has been crowned in a once-in-a-generation royal event that is being witnessed by hundreds of high-profile guests inside Westminster Abbey, as well as tens of thousands of well-wishers who have gathered in central London despite the rain.
The intricate coronation service followed a traditional template that has stayed much the same for more than 1,000 years.
The King took the Coronation Oath and became the first monarch to pray aloud at his coronation. In his prayer he asked to “be a blessing” to people “of every faith and conviction.”
He was anointed with holy oil by the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, the spiritual leader of the Anglican Church who is leading the ceremony. The anointment, considered the most sacred part of the ceremony, took place behind a screen.
The King was presented with the coronation regalia, including the royal Robe and Stole, in what is known as the investiture part of the service.
He was then crowned with the 360-year-old St. Edward’s Crown, the most significant part of the coronation ceremony. After crowning the King, Welby declared: “God Save the King.”
Wearing the crown, the King was seated on the throne, after which the Archbishop of Canterbury invited the British public, as well as those from “other Realms,” for the first time, to recite a pledge of allegiance to the new monarch and his “heirs and successors.”
Ahead of the event, some parts of the British media and public interpreted the invitation as a command, reporting that people had been “asked” and “called” to swear allegiance to the King. In the face of such criticism, the Church of England revised the text of the liturgy so that members of the public would be given a choice between saying simply “God save King Charles” or reciting the full pledge of allegiance.
Once the King was crowned, his wife, Queen Camilla, was crowned in her own, shorter ceremony with Queen Mary’s Crown – marking the first time in recent history that a new crown wasn’t made specifically for this occasion – and presented with the Sceptre and Rod.
While Charles became King on the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II in September last year, the coronation is the formal crowning of the monarch and is a profoundly religious affair, reflecting the fact that aside from being head of state of the United Kingdom and 14 other countries, Charles is also the Supreme Governor of the Church of England.
However, it has been modernized in certain key ways. The archbishop acknowledged the multiple faiths observed in the UK during the ceremony, saying the Church of England “will seek to foster an environment in which people of all faiths may live freely.”
The King and Queen arrived at Westminster Abbey in a splendid coach drawn by six horses, accompanied by the Household Cavalry. They then walked down the long aisle wearing historic robes, flanked by the top officials of the Church of England as well as some of their closest family members.
Despite the splendor of the occasion, it has not been without controversy. Some have objected to millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money being spent on a lavish ceremony at a time when millions of Britons are suffering a severe cost-of-living crisis.
The coronation has also attracted anti-monarchy demonstrations, with a small number of protesters arrested in central London on Saturday morning before the event began.
Some royal fans spent the past few days camping along the 1.3-mile (2km) route from Buckingham Palace, the British monarchy’s official London residence, to Westminster Abbey, the nation’s coronation church since 1066, in order to secure the best vantage point for the procession.
By early Saturday, the London Metropolitan Police Service announced that all viewing areas along the procession route were full and closed off to new arrivals.
The Met said ahead of time that Saturday would be the largest one-day policing operation in decades, with more than 11,500 officers on duty in London. Security around the event came into focus earlier this week when a man was arrested just outside Buckingham Palace after he allegedly threw suspected shotgun cartridges into the palace grounds.
The ceremony wasexpected to last two hours – about an hour shorter than Elizabeth II’s coronation in 1953. It began with the recognition and oath, followed by a reading from the Bible by UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and – in a coronation first – gospel music.
The congregation, while including some 2,300 people, is much smaller than it was in 1953 when temporary structures had to be erected within the abbey to accommodate the more than 8,000 people on the guest list.
The doors to the abbey opened just before 8 a.m. local time, with the first guests taking their seats a full three hours before the ceremony began.
Among the first people to arrive were singer Lionel Richie, musician Nick Cave, actresses Emma Thompson, Joanna Lumley and Judi Dench, composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, UK Labour Party leader Keir Starmer, and broadcaster Stephen Fry.
Top British officials, faith leaders and international representatives followed in their steps. They all took their seats in the vast church with more than an hour to go – reflecting the huge logistical challenges presented by an event attended by hundreds of VIPs.
All Sunak’s living predecessors as prime minister were there: Liz Truss, Boris Johnson, Theresa May, David Cameron, Gordon Brown, Tony Blair and John Major. Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, UK opposition leader Keir Starmer and Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt were also in attendance.
First Lady of the United States Jill Biden and the US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry were there, as was the Chinese Vice President Han Zheng.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, French President Emmanuel Macron and numerous other world leaders were also present.
Last to arrive, just before the King and Queen, were the most senior members of King Charles’ family, his siblings and children, including Prince Harry who traveled to the UK from the US without his wife, Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex and their two young children. Saturday is also Prince Archie’s 4th birthday.
Music is playing a central part in the ceremony, and five new compositions have been commissioned for the main part of the service, including an anthem by Lloyd Webber, who is better known for West End musicals.
Charles’ consort Camilla will also be crowned in a shorter, simpler part of the ceremony.
Once done with the formalities, the newly crowned King and Queen will ride back in a much larger parade to Buckingham Palace, where they will be greeted by a royal salute.
The pomp and pageantry will conclude with the customary balcony appearance by the King and his family as they join the crowds below in watching a flypast of more than 60 aircraft.
While undoubtedly a historic occasion, the run-up to the coronation has seen controversy.
Republic, a campaign group that calls for the abolition of the monarchy, said the idea of the “homage of the people” was “offensive, tone deaf and a gesture that holds the people in contempt.”
Some eyebrows were also raised earlier this week when a controversial and widely criticized UK public order bill came into force.
Since the death of Queen Elizabeth II last year, there have been a number of instances of anti-monarchists turning up at royal engagements to voice their grievances against the institution.
The new rules, signed into law by the King on Tuesday, just days before the coronation, empower the police to take stronger action against peaceful protesters.
From Wednesday, long-standing protest tactics such as locking on, where protesters physically attach themselves to things like buildings, could lead to a six-month prison sentence or “unlimited fine,” according to the UK Home Office.
Republic said it had received a letter from the Home Office which set out the new policing powers and asked the campaign group to “forward this letter to your members who are likely to be affected by these legislative changes.” The group added that it would not be deterred by it.
Republic said it was expecting between 1,500 and 2,000 people to join an anti-monarchy protest at Trafalgar Square, just south of the royal procession route. On Saturday morning, Republic said on Twitter that organizers of the protest had been arrested shortly after the demonstration started – including the group’s leader, Graham Smith.
The Metropolitan Police tweeted: “Earlier today we arrested four people in the area of St Martin’s Lane. They were held on suspicion of conspiracy to cause public nuisance.”
A further three people were arrested “on suspicion of possessing articles to cause criminal damage,” the force added. And “a number of arrests” have been made of people suspected of breaching the peace.
Republic had said earlier on Twitter that police “won’t say” why their demonstrators were detained. “So much for the right to peaceful protest,” the group said.
Despite the pomp of Saturday’s events, the King is facing significant challenges. A CNN poll has found that Britons are more likely to say their views of the monarchy have worsened than improved over the past decade.
The results of the survey, conducted for CNN by the polling company Savanta in March, show Charles’ heir Prince William is viewed with greater affection than his father.
Despite their cooler attitude towards the King, most Britons say they plan to take part in at least one event related to the coronation this weekend, the poll found, with many communities planning street parties and lunches.
Artists Katy Perry, Richie and Take That will headline the “Coronation Concert” at Windsor Castle on Sunday evening and people have also been encouraged to use Monday, the final day of the long weekend, to volunteer in their communities.
London — When the world tunes in to watch the coronation of Britain’s King Charles III on May 6, there may be a lot of eyes focused on what the monarch is wearing. The eco-minded king has decided to reuse several historic items on the big day, including some robes literally made of gold.
“His majesty the king has decided to reuse pieces from the coronation of his grandfather, King George VI, in 1937,” Caroline De Guitaut, Deputy Surveyor of the King’s Works of Art, explained to CBS News.
Clothing the king for his big day takes precise planning, and that means readying the Coronation Vestments, including “two of the most significant pieces worn by the sovereign during the investiture” portion of the ancient coronation ceremony, said De Guitaut, showing off two golden robes that “haven’t been worn for 70 years.”
King George V is depicted in the three robes worn at his coronation ceremony in Westminster Abbey. From top, The Royal Crimson Robe of State, The Golden Imperial Mantle and the Royal Robe of Purple Velvet, as first depicted in The Illustrated London News, in 1910.
Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group/Getty
A glittering, embroidered robe made of gold silk, called the Supertunica, will be worn under the Golden Imperial Mantle, which was first made for King George IV in 1821.
“It is woven from cloth of gold and embroidered with goldwork embroidery to a design which has a strong tradition,” said De Guitaut.
The monarch was determined to make his coronation as sustainable as possible, and other historic items have also been dusted off and restored for the occasion.
King Charles III will wear a glittering, embroidered robe made of gold silk, called the Supertunica (left), under the Golden Imperial Mantle (right), which was first made for King George IV in 1821, for his May 6, 2023 coronation.
CBS News
“We’ve got this wonderful, sustainable, eco-friendly king who’s reusing something rather than having a new glove,” said Deborah Moore, CEO of Dents Glovemakers.
Charles will wear the same coronation glove used by his grandfather nearly a century ago.
De Guitaut explained that the glove would be “placed on the king’s right hand during the investiture” on Saturday.
The king will also reuse his grandfather’s sword belt, which will be placed around the Supertunica.
The golden robes weigh about 13 pounds together, and the king’s 9-year-old grandson, Prince George, will help carry them through Westminster Abbey as Charles walks to his throne for the crowning moment.
Ian Lee is a CBS News correspondent based in London, where he reports for CBS News, CBS Newspath and CBS News Streaming Network. Lee, who joined CBS News in March 2019, is a multi-award-winning journalist, whose work covering major international stories has earned him some of journalism’s top honors, including an Emmy, Peabody and the Investigative Reporters and Editors’ Tom Renner award.
King Charles III will be formally crowned Saturday, marking the first coronation for the British monarchy since his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, was crowned in 1953. Holly Williams has the latest on the final preparations.
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London — King Charles told his advisors long before his own coronation ceremony that he “wanted them to start afresh,” according to historian and CBS News royal contributor Amanda Foreman. “So, what we are going to see is a very, very different coronation” compared to the ceremony held for his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, in 1953.
So, what are the differences?
King Charles’ “plus one”
Charles’ wife Camilla, the Queen Consort, will be formally crowned alongside her husband during the May 6 coronation ceremony at Westminster Abbey. Upon her coronation, she will drop the “consort” from her title and be known as Queen Camilla.
Prince Philip, the longtime husband of Queen Elizabeth, was never crowned, and was known throughout the queen’s reign as her “liege lord.”
While Queen Camilla will be crowned — specifically with Queen Mary’s Crown from the royal family’s extensive Crown Jewels collection — her role does not convey any political power, like Charles’ mother had as the queen “regnant” and Britain’s sovereign. That role and the power it conveys, though extremely limited under modern Britain’s constitutional monarchy, lies entirely with Charles.
What he wears
King Charles will wear several historic garments for his actual coronation ceremony, including heavy ceremonial robes made of gold thread, but unlike his mother, underneath it all, Foreman said the king was “not going to wear a special outfit. He’s going to wear his military uniform.”
Queen Elizabeth, on the other hand, had a special Coronation Dress commissioned by a British designer.
According to the Royal Collection Trust, the designer “submitted nine different designs and the queen accepted the eighth, but suggested the addition of embroideries in various colours rather than all in silver.”
Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, on the day of her coronation, Buckingham Palace, 1953. (Colorised black and white print).
The Print Collector/Getty Images
A smaller affair
King Charles’ coronation will be a much smaller affair than his mother’s.
Approximately 2,000 guests have been invited, as opposed to the over 8,000 people who were invited to the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.
Queen Elizabeth’s ceremony lasted almost three hours, but King Charles’ will last only two hours.
The coronation processions will differ in size, too. King Charles and Queen Consort Camilla will travel to Westminster Abbey, and then the king and Queen Camilla — with her new official title — will travel back to Buckingham Palace along on the same route, which takes approximately 40 minutes at the speed of a horse-drawn carriage.
King Charles III and Camilla, Queen Consort during a State Banquet at Buckingham Palace on Nov. 22, 2022 in London, England.
Chris Jackson/Getty Images
Queen Elizabeth’s procession from Westminster Abbey back to the palace after her coronation took a much more circuitous route, with her waving and smiling to well-wishers for around five hours.
The coronation oath
Britain has changed a lot in the decades since Queen Elizabeth was crowned, with a majority of the country no longer describing themselves as Christian.
However, England legally remains a Christian nation, and the Church of England, also known as the Anglican Church, is the official religion, with the monarch serving as its titular head, known as the Defender of the Faith. The coronation ceremony itself is a Christian ritual.
In the 1990’s, then-Prince Charles sparked controversy when he said he would be a defender of faith in general, rather than the Defender of the Faith.
In his coronation oath, he will give a nod to other religions, kneeling before the altar in Westminster Abbey and saying: “God of compassion and mercy whose Son was sent not to be served but to serve, give grace that I may find in thy service perfect freedom and in that freedom knowledge of thy truth. Grant that I may be a blessing to all thy children, of every faith and belief, that together we may discover the ways of gentleness and be led into the paths of peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”
During Saturday’s coronation of King Charles III and Queen Camilla, a spectacular military procession six months in the making will contain the “key lessons and best bits” from recent events, such as the Platinum Jubilee and the September funeral of Queen Elizabeth II, said a spokesman for the Ministry of Defense.
“The big change from recent ceremonial events is the number of troops involved,” he added. “For the coronation there will be 7,000 ceremonial troops taking part—the most seen at any state occasion since the 1953 coronation.”
It is the first time Britain—and indeed the world—will see the coronation of a king and queen since 1953, and though some elements of the day will be much smaller than in previous coronations, the Mall will still be filled with troops during the procession.
“It will be an iconic image of the day,” the spokesman said. “In Buckingham Palace Gardens, there will be 4,000 troops stood in front of Their Majesties showing their support, confirming the inseparable bond between the Armed Forces and the sovereign.”
Buckingham Palace has also released further information about the procession, including the roles of various members and the king’s and queen’s schedules for the big day. The initial procession will leave Buckingham Palace at 10:20 a.m., taking about 33 minutes. The king and queen will travel in the horse-drawn Diamond Jubilee State Coach. The gilded black carriage, built in 2011 to honor the late queen’s 60th anniversary, has heat, air conditioning, power windows, and a suspension system.
Their Majesties will be escorted to Westminster Abbey by the Sovereign’s Escort, who have carried out this task since 1660. The procession will be led by the Household Cavalry Mounted Band, a group of 48 horses and musicians—with two distinctive drum horses, Atlas and Apollo—playing eight marches along the route. In total, 200 personnel and horses are involved.
When the king and queen arrive at the Abbey, they will be seated in the Chairs of Estate. The chairs were originally made for Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip in 1953, but they have been conserved and reupholstered to feature the king’s and queen’s new cyphers. After the king moves to the coronation chair and is anointed with oil behind the screen, he will be presented with the traditional regalia (the Spurs, the Armills, the Orb, the Ring, the Glove, the Rod, and the Sceptre) by a combination of members of the British peerage and officials of the Anglican church from across the UK. When the king and queen are enthroned, they will sit on the same coronation chairs used by King George VI and the Queen Mother in 1937, reupholstered with new cyphers.
The Prince of Wales will play a large role in the ceremony, first by assisting the king during his investment with the Imperial Mantle, a robe of gilded thread made for George IV, and the Stole Royal, a new scarf commissioned as the traditional gift of the Worshipful Company of Girdlers, and then by leading an homage later in the ceremony.
On the return procession, the king and queen, traveling in the traditional Gold State Coach, will be followed by the working members of the royal family and their children. Princess Anne, colonel of the Blues and Royals, will ride as the Gold Stick in Waiting with the regiment to the rear of the state coach.
The next carriage will carry the Prince and Princess of Wales,Prince George, Princess Charlotte, and Prince Louis. The Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh, Lady Louise Mountbatten-Windsor, and the Earl of Wessex will travel in another carriage, while the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester and Vice Admiral Sir Timothy Laurence will travel in a third. The Duke of Kent and Princess Alexandra will follow by car.
The royals will return to Buckingham Palace for a military flypast on the east balcony. The official program will end with a historymaking moment, when photographer Hugo Burnand takes the coronation portrait. After the pomp and circumstance concludes, the king and queen will host an informal family lunch at the palace.
When King Charles III greeted onlookers during a surprise walkabout at Buckingham Palace Friday afternoon, one brave man asked if he was “nervous for tomorrow.” According to the BBC, Charles simply laughed in response. With less than 24 hours to go before his historic coronation, the king did squeeze in one last rehearsal at Westminster Abbey’s Theater of Coronation in the morning, along with Queen Camilla and Prince William, but spent his afternoon greeting the crowds who were camping out in preparation for tomorrow’s procession.
William and Princess Kate also joined for a palace luncheon, where the royals mingled with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and the prime ministers of the realm, the 15 countries where the British monarch is still the head of state. The event began in the palace’s white drawing room, where Kate was spotted chatting with Prime Minister of New Zealand Chris Hipkins and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of Australia, one day after William hosted him for a meeting at Kensington Palace. They were joined at the luncheon with Prince Edward and Duchess Sophie of Edinburgh, Princess Anne and her husband Tim Laurence, the Duke of Kent, and the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester.
From Toby Melville/ Getty
During the event, Kate wore a white dress by Jenny Packham, black pumps, and a pair of pearl drop earrings that were a 1947 wedding present to the late Queen Elizabeth II from the King of Bahrain. Kate has previously worn the earrings for very special events, like the queen’s funeral in September 2022 and the funeral of Prince Philip in April 2021. It’s a sign that she will likely be breaking out a few excellent family heirlooms for her various appearances over the weekend.
On Thursday, William and Kate visited a pub in Soho, where they talked with well wishers and learned about the hospitality industry’s plans for accommodating an influx of visitors for the coronation. According to Town & Country, Kate said that her three children, Prince George, Princess Charlotte, and Prince Louis are feeling a little nervous about tomorrow. ”There’s a mix of nerves and anticipation and excitement going on at the moment,” Kate said. When one women asked if she thought Louis would behave, she crossed her fingers. “I hope so,” she said. “You never, you never quite know do you?”
After his walkabout, Charles hosted another reception at Buckingham Palace for visiting officials and dignitaries, including Ukraine’s First Lady Olena Zelenska and Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, Prince Albert II and Princess Charlene of Monaco, Crown Princess Mary and Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark, and Queen Letizia of Spain. First Lady Jill Biden is representing the United States at Saturday’s event, and she arrived at the palace reception after spending the day with Sunak’s wife Akshata Murty. The pair met veterans at 10 Downing Street and visited a primary school.
Born on October 24, 1966, Sir Edward Young was educated as a boarder at Reading School in Berkshire.
Before becoming an advisor to the royals, Sir Edward Young worked for the international side of Barclays Bank between between 1985 and 1997.
He has had executive roles including as a specialist in international trade finance and as manager for the Corporate Bank European Currency Programme.
In 1997 he made the move to Barclays’ Head Office to become the bank’s Deputy Head of Corporate Public Relations.
After leaving his role as the bank’s Deputy Head of Corporate Public Relations, Sir Edward Young became the advisor to the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, Michael Portillo in 1999.
After that he became the advisor to the Leader of the Opposition, William Hague.
In 2001, he was appointed Head of Communications at Granada plc working primarily on the merger with Carlton Communications which formed ITV PLC in 2004.
It was also in 2004 that Sir Edward Young began as the Assistant Private Secretary to the Queen before being promoted to Deputy Private Secretary in September 2007.
After a decade working as Deputy Private Secretary to Her Majesty, Sir Edward Young was promoted to Private Secretary in 2017 – after Christopher Geidt retired from his role.
When did Sir Edward Young become King Charles’ private secretary?
Following the death of the Queen in 2022, Sir Edward Young now guides King Charles on matters of the state and constitutional issues.
He also works closely with the Government.
What is the role of a private secretary?
As Private Secretary to the Sovereign, he is the senior operational member of the Royal Households of the United Kingdom and is responsible for supporting the King in his duties as Head of State.
The Private Secretary also liaises with the Armed Forces, the Church and the many organisations of which Her Majesty is patron.
Young is also Keeper of the Royal Archives and a Trustee of the Royal Collection Trust and has direct control over the Press Office, the office of the Director for Security Liaison, the research, correspondence, anniversaries and records offices.
London — Seven decades ago, the coronation of a queen in the U.K. served as a battleground for broadcasters in the U.S.
With television in its infancy, CBS and NBC fought their first all-out war for supremacy in 1953 to screen the pageantry to a post-war America still marveling at moving pictures synchronized to sound.
At the time, CBS News’ Ron Cochrane reported from Boston’s Logan International Airport. With transmission satellites a decade away, and Atlantic underwater cable too expensive, U.S. networks flew reels in from the U.K. Both CBS and NBC built new broadcast facilities and waited at Logan, because it was one hour closer to London than New York.
The scene inside Westminster Abbey during the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, on June 2, 1953.
Matt Green / Getty Images
While Americans waited to see the splendor and spectacle for themselves, CBS News’ Bill Downs relayed news from the control tower as staff scanned the flight scope.
CBS’ plane landed at 4:12 p.m. Eastern time on June 2, 1953, to celebration, with NBC’s plane some 45 minutes behind.
However, it was not a clear victory. NBC, realizing it would lose the flight race to CBS, made a last-minute deal with ABC. Younger and smaller at the time, ABC piggybacked off Canada’s coverage on the CBC.
By the time CBS engineers fed their own reel to go to air, it was too late. NBC, thanks to ABC and the Canadians, had beaten CBS by 13 minutes.
However, years later, Walter Cronkite shared a secret story of a mix-up. The first reel CBS chose turned out to be the wrong one. But, it let CBS say that it had showed America the actual coronation first because NBC had started its own broadcast from the very beginning of the ceremony.
And, as Cronkite would say, “that’s the way it is.”
LONDON — In a ceremony of pageantry, quirks and ancient tradition, King Charles III, Britain’s 62nd monarch, was on Saturday officially crowned head of state of the United Kingdom and 14 Commonwealth realms.
The king, who succeeds his late mother, Queen Elizabeth II, was coronated at London’s Westminster Abbey alongside his wife Camilla in a two-hour ceremony attended by world leaders, members of the royal family, foreign dignitaries, faith leaders, and heads of state.
The historic event was overseen by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, and punctuated with rituals, regalia, and objects dating back centuries.
These included oaths, spurs, a Jewelled Sword of Offering, various sceptres and an orb. The king was anointed with holy oil via a coronation spoon, while the watching public were offered the chance to declare their loyalty by proclaiming: “God save King Charles.”
Among the 2,000 guests were French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte. First Lady Jill Biden, the wife of U.S. President Joe Biden, was also present, accompanied by her granddaughter, Finnegan. They wore blue and gold attire respectively, interpreted as support for Ukraine, whose flags share the same colors.
The U.S. president himself chose not to attend, but wrote on Twitter: “Congratulations to King Charles III and Queen Camilla on their Coronation. The enduring friendship between the U.S. and the U.K. is a source of strength for both our peoples. I am proud the First Lady is representing the United States for this historic occasion.”
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen sat beside President of the European Council Charles Michel, despite long-standing tensions between Brussels’ two most prominent politicians. European Parliament President Roberta Metsola was also in the congregation.
U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry was seen speaking briefly to former U.K. Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, now president for global affairs at Meta. King Charles has been a life-long campaigner on the environment.
U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who gave a reading during the service, was joined by senior members of his Cabinet and as well as all his living predecessors, including Tony Blair, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss — the latter having served in Downing Street for just 49 days last year. Commons Leader Penny Mordaunt, a member of Sunak’s Cabinet, took a leading role in the ceremony, carrying the sword of state due to her ceremonial role as lord president of the privy council.
Keir Starmer, leader of the U.K.’s opposition Labour Party, sat next to the leader of the Liberal Democrats, Ed Davey, while leaders of the devolved nations in the U.K. were also in attendance. Prince Harry was seated among members of the U.K. royal family, though his wife, Meghan Markle, remained in California with their children.
Also present were the presidents of Germany and Italy, Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Sergio Mattarella, China’s vice-president, Han Zheng, and the prime minister of Pakistan, Shehbaz Sharif. Han’s attendance had been a subject of controversy in the U.K. due to his central role in China’s repression of Hong Kong.
There were also leaders from the 14 Commonwealth nations for whom Charles is head of state, including Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and New Zealand’s Chris Hipkins, as well as representatives from Grenada, Papa New Guinea, the Bahamas and others.
Celebrities such as singer Katy Perry, chef Jamie Oliver, actor Emma Thompson, and British TV duo Ant and Dec also took seats in the Abbey.
Thousands of flag-carrying members of the public gathered along the procession route | Niklaas Halle’n/AFP via Getty Images
Britain is a constitutional monarchy, and as head of state King Charles has a ceremonial role in opening and dissolving parliament, appointing a government, and approving bills before they become law. He also meets weekly with Sunak, the prime minister.
However, the ability to make and pass legislation rests with politicians in an elected parliament.
Thousands of flag-carrying members of the public enjoyed another British tradition — light summer drizzle — as they gathered in the early hours along the procession route from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Abbey. Before the coronation, the head of the U.K.’s leading republican movement, which held a protest in Trafalgar Square, was among those arrested by police.
Members of the royal family were gathered on the Buckingham Palace balcony later Saturday afternoon ahead of a series of celebratory events taking place Sunday, including a pop concert at Windsor Castle. Monday has been designated a public holiday in Britain to mark the occasion.
This article is being updated as the ceremonies continue.
