Commentary: King Charles inherits a changed Britain — and public apathy about the crown

Your Majesty, and almost the thousand years’ worth of majesties before you — Britain can’t seem to quit you.

At least not so far.

Seventy years ago, the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II inaugurated what Winston Churchill dreamily hoped would be a new Elizabethan age. His turn of phrase suited a homogeneous and class-abiding Britain yearning for an end to postwar privations, a country that didn’t really recognize the emerging restiveness of the Commonwealth nations beyond its borders.

On a damp Saturday this month, with the words of an ancient oath and an already relentlessly tested modern pledge “not to be served but to