By David Salter
As we pass the first-year anniversary of the coronation of King Charles III, we present this piece from Happy & Glorious: A Royal Celebration reflecting on the King, and some surprising adventures in Egypt.
On 6 May, Charles Philip Arthur George Mountbatten Windsor, His Majesty King Charles III, will be crowned in Westminster Abbey. Are we interested? I confess—as a Brit who once lived in the USA—that I am. But if you disagree, please don’t stop reading. Charles is already King and Head of State of the United Kingdom and 14 other Realms—including such big ones as Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. He is also Head of the Commonwealth, with its 56 countries and 2.5 billion people. He inherited all this immediately upon the death of his much-loved and universally respected mother, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, whose reign, at 70 years, was the longest in British history. Hers is surely an extremely hard act to follow—not that Her Majesty’s faith and dedication to her duty was a mere act. I met her once and we had a lovely chat, making me late for another meeting. My best excuse ever for being late! Now, I have every confidence in our new King. He’s a really good chap. And I am only slightly biased because he bought me 15 water buffalo and 3,000 hens, helped me extend a school for tiny children in Egypt, and has been kind enough to exchange personal letters with me. Of course, none of us is perfect, and neither is our King. But I believe he has learned a great deal from his tough and rather lonely childhood, his failed relationships, and from being an amazingly far-sighted and tenacious prophet of environmentalism. He has had a long and detailed training to be an excellent King, and I believe he is already putting that into practice. Definitely someone we Brits (of a certain age) can call a Good Chap.
Going into history, we previously had King Charles I, who caused civil war and indeed bloody revolution in Britain long before France and the USA thought of such things. We cut his head off. Later his son, Charles II, also known as the Merry Monarch, had himself a fine old time but did little good, in my opinion—other than in 1660 founding the Royal Society, the premier society for world-class scientists. These Kings were not great precedents, and many thought that when our current Charles came to the throne he would take the name George VII in honour of his serious-minded, diligent and shy grandfather, who saw us through World War II before tragically dying young from cancer. But Charles III it now is.
In view of the previous two, His Majesty is certain to add lustre to the brand. King Charles III is a serious-minded man with an amazing memory (like his mother, our beloved late Queen). Charles studied archaeology and anthropology at Cambridge and he remains interested in diverse cultures and the potential synergy between them. He has interests not just in his Christian heritage but in Islam (specially the Sufi tradition) and indeed also in much more esoteric areas, explored in his book Harmony. All this—and his late father, HRH The Duke of Edinburgh—has encouraged his active involvement in environmental conservation and indeed cultural conservation. I could write much about this. But others have already done so very extensively, and I suspect you want to hear about water buffalo, hens and schools for tiny tots. So let me take you to Egypt.
Come back next Thursday for the next installment in this story.