Whether they realise it or not, by refusing to explain royal ceremony, the BBC and the mainstream media espouse Bagehot’s view that monarchy is a new opium of the people
THE ELEVEN DAYS FOLLOWING the late Queen’s death and the accession of the new King were among the most remarkable of my life. I’d covered royal events before, including the funerals of both Princess Diana and Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother. But this was different, in both length and intensity.
It was exhausting but exhilarating. It gave me a front-row seat as the immaculately rehearsed ceremonies of the new King’s accession and the late Queen’s last journey, lying in state and funeral unfolded in scene after scene, like the animated pages of an illuminated manuscript.
But were they a liturgy, to
