Olive Goldsmith, who is now a retired Refugee Council employee, said her experience was shaped by two friends who provided an outsider's view, with one having spent a childhood in India under British rule, and another from Prague which had been occupied by Nazi Germany. Not everyone was wowed by that day in 1953.

They were either part of the estimated 3 million people who lined the processional route in London, among those who attended street parties, watching on television for the first time, or following from thousands of miles away in British colonies.Įlizabeth, who died last September aged 96 after 70 years on the throne, had become queen in 1952 on the death of her father: by tradition there is a gap of some time between the succession and the coronation. Tawse and Piper were two of 12 people who spoke to Reuters about their memories of the queen's coronation on Jahead of the crowning on May 6 of her son King Charles with much of the same pomp and pageantry but a scaled-down procession and a shorter ceremony. 'Next thing it was coffee bars, and then spaghetti bolognese, and then mini skirts. 'This Elizabethan age, it really did begin that way,' she said, clutching a black and white photograph of herself with friends on the day. Tawse had decorated the hospital bedpans in red, white and blue tape, a small symbol of the excitement greeting 27-year old Elizabeth as the new head of the royal family on the brink of a technicolor age.įor Brenda Piper, who slept on the pavement to secure a spot along the procession route, there was a sense of amazement at the sheer 'spectacle' of the queen sweeping past in a gold state coach.

'Then suddenly, we heard an enormous roar, and we knew that probably the queen was coming by,' she said, her eyes vividly lighting up at the memory through a pair of gold rimmed glasses. 'We climbed over the barricades and the crowds were really deep,' Tawse recounted. It was the huge crescendo of noise she remembers today, aged 88, twinkling in delight as she thinks back to a time when Britain, still enduring rationing eight years after the end of World War Two, turned out in force to see the opulence and glamour of the start of a historic reign. Pamela Tawse was 18 and still in her nurse's uniform and cap when she made her way to central London after her night shift, eager to catch a glimpse of the new Queen Elizabeth on the day of her coronation.

Elizabeth and her german garden book