|
|
Article: Singing in the reign; Gene Kelly's musical was the No. 1 film, women were still hanged for murder and the sun had yet to set on the Empire. How very different we were in 1953, the year of the Queen's Coronation...
- Article from:
- Daily Mail (London)
- Article date:
- May 23, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 Solo Syndication Limited. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
Byline: JOHN MACLEOD
IT cost but five shillings in the old money and after half a century its gold covers are somewhat battered.
Yet, The Queen: The Coronation 1953, stuffed with loyal and dutiful addresses by fawning advertisers and its features lavishly illustrated, is less a memoir of an age long past than a glimpse into a Britain that, today, seems like another planet.
I stumbled upon it the other day on my bookshelves ? it had, I believe, been acquired years earlier by my mother from a fleamarket ? and its worshipful prose reminds us of a time of deference long gone.
'Through a vast concourse of people a young Queen rode out to be ...