Convenience Big Store: An ancient clan that moves with the times

6 May, 2023

Life

King Charles, the ultra-traditional eco-radical. Chris Jackson/Getty

An ancient clan that moves with the times

"Whenever I write about the royals, says Helen Lewis in The Atlantic, I find myself wondering how a family that owes its position to the "illegitimate son of a Norman noble invading Sussex in 1066" can so credibly claim to be at the vanguard of social change. But this ancient clan has a genius for moving with the times. Its latest chief, King Charles, has always embodied a unique blend of "eco-radicalism" and "deep traditionalism", and the Coronation is no different. The oil used for his anointing will be vegan – he chose to spurn the traditional ambergris (derived from a whale's guts) or civet musk (squeezed from a tree mammal's anal glands). But tradition comes into play too: the oil will be from olives harvested from next to his grandmother Alice's grave in Jerusalem. "It has been blessed by an Orthodox patriarch with a huge beard."

"Coronations, like monarchies, have had to evolve for a very long time indeed," says Hannah Rose Woods in The New York Times. George IV's crowning in 1821, after Britain's victory in the Napoleonic wars, was "one of the most lavish in British history" – and it became symptomatic of the "scandalous overspending" that made him deeply unpopular. In 1831, his successor William IV, "perhaps sensing the mood", tried to skip his coronation entirely. He was eventually persuaded to have a small ceremony with no banquet and a short procession. The coronation of Victoria in 1838, "in the wake of a transatlantic financial crisis", was restrained to the point of being disparagingly nicknamed the "penny crowning". But it set a new trend: some 400,000 Britons turned out to watch, and there was a huge fair and fireworks display in Hyde Park.

Quirk of history

When Buckingham Palace released images of the Coronation invitation last month, says BBC News, the Royal Archives showcased invites from previous crownings. They include a depiction of King George III and Queen Charlotte looking wonderfully at ease with each other, despite having only met a fortnight earlier; Queen Victoria's bright red card, the first to be printed in colour; George VI's busy black-and-white design; and the simple one for Queen Elizabeth II designed by Joan Hassall, who also created a specially illustrated note for the then Prince Charles.

Eating in

Coronation chicken – no, sorry, Poulet Reine Elizabeth. Getty

Brits spend a lot of time defending their country from "outdated and unkind culinary stereotypes", says The Economist. The "penitential" bean-and-spinach quiche unveiled as the official Coronation dish "does not make things easier". Light on flavour, "stodgy", and "deadeningly heavy", it's a throwback to the "patchouli-scented vegetarianism of the 1970s and 1980s". And it's nowhere near as good as King Charles's mother's celebratory dish, coronation chicken. The creamy number subtly hinted at the entente cordiale with France – its official name was Poulet Reine Elizabeth – and "nodded towards" the recently ended Raj with its use of curry powder and rice. Plus, of course, it was delicious. Have a go at the (rather fiddly) original recipe here, or Diana Henry's excellent modern take – with mango and avocado – here.

Property

THE CASTLE Earlshall Castle in Fife has a regal history, having hosted King Charles's ancestors Mary Queen of Scots and James I. Set in 34 acres of parks and woodland, the 10-bedroom home has a wealth of period features, including oak panelling, traditional fireplaces and a 50ft gallery with the coats of arms of European royalty painted on the ceiling. Outside, ancient stone walls enclose a secret garden, a rose terrace and a bowling green. Nearby Leuchars station has direct trains to London. £8m.

Quirk of history

Queen Victoria Receiving the Sacrament at her Coronation, by Charles Robert Leslie

Sorry your majesty: no ticket, no admission

Coronation planners have had to deal with their fair share of last-minute hiccups, says Smithsonian Magazine. George IV's estranged wife, Caroline of Brunswick, tried to gatecrash his 1821 coronation, but was told rather brusquely by a doorman: "No ticket, no admission." Victoria's 1838 coronation was so "badly rehearsed" that a bishop mistakenly told the Queen the service was over too soon – she had to be "hastily retrieved" by a red-faced official – before accidentally wedging the coronation ring on the wrong finger. At the end of the service, "an elderly nobleman fell down the steps of the throne while paying homage".

Her son's wasn't much better, says Tatler. King Edward VII was diagnosed with appendicitis just two days before his coronation in 1902 – "by any standard, the most shockingly bad timing". When the ceremony eventually went ahead six weeks later, the ageing and almost blind Archbishop of Canterbury could barely read the prayers. After appearing to drop the crown, he eventually managed to place it on the King's head – but got it the wrong way round.

⛴️😵‍💫 The final event of George VI's coronation in May 1937 was the royal review of the naval fleet, off the coast of Portsmouth. To provide commentary, the BBC hired a former lieutenant commander called Thomas Woodrooffe, who prepared for his big moment with a heavy drinking session. In the four minutes before a panicky BBC producer faded him out, the drunken sailor roved between repetition ("it's lit up by fairy lamps"), mumbling, and sudden bursts of shouting ("The fleet's gone! It's disappeared!"). Listen here.

Comment

The scaffolding on which all songs are built

Imagine a painter wondering if they can use a certain shade of red without getting sued, says Elizabeth Nelson in The Washington Post. "Amazingly, in the music industry the aesthetic equivalent of this thought process is no longer as insane as it sounds." This week, Ed Sheeran won a Manhattan court case in which he had been accused of ripping off Marvin Gaye's 1973 classic Let's Get It On with his own tune Thinking Out Loud. The lawsuit, brought by the family of Let's Get It On's co-writer, Ed Townsend, rested on the flimsiest of evidence: "A similar but not identical chord progression used by both songs as a principal motif."

A chord progression – in simple terms, a sequence of grouped musical notes – is "the scaffolding on which essentially all songs are built". The Townsend estate's "nakedly cynical" argument obscured how much music relies on recycling these progressions. There are thousands of instances of chords played in the same order as Let's Get It On that predate it, including several popular songs cited by Sheeran's legal team. "The litigants no more 'own' that progression than they have a legal claim on the wind or the rain." If their lawsuit had succeeded, it would have set a dangerous precedent that would have seen countless more musicians dragged into court. And it's bitterly ironic that all this was being done in Gaye's name: he was a peerless musical magpie who "wove together a rich tapestry of gospel, jazz, doo-wop and R&B into a thrilling and transporting original sound".

Art

Tableau no 2, composition no V by Piet Mondrian

How abstract art was born

It's no accident that abstract art emerged when it did, says Stephen Kern in Engelsberg Ideas. In the 19th century, the world was changing beyond recognition: the telegraph had been invented in the 1830s, then the telephone in 1876, followed by the wireless. Science had discovered invisible forces that could send messages over vast distances, transforming communication, and with it "the experience of time and space". In Remembrance of Things Past, Marcel Proust finds telephone conversations an eerie invention. The voice of his grandmother – so distant, so "cut off from the rest of her being" – felt as though it came from beyond the grave. No longer were her words connected to "the movements of her body, her facial expressions, the sounds and smells and touches that had completed the mise-en-scène of prior conversations".

At the same time, the world faced a "major assault" on the foundations of Western thought and morality. There was the rise of nihilism: in 1882, Nietzsche announced the death of God, and reasoned that humans therefore had to be more "godlike" and create their own moral system and basis for a meaningful life. Then you had the anarchists, who flatly rejected the old system in the hope that a more just world would take its place. It was against this shifting cultural and scientific landscape that artists began to move into abstraction. Until that point – right back to the first cave paintings – art had captured "recognisable objects". In the early 20th century, artists like Hilma af Klint and Piet Mondrian began "rejecting the subject matter of the material world", and instead sought to "express pure spirit with abstract forms". It was a "revolutionary stylistic development" – one that's impossible to understand without appreciating the "larger cultural framework".

Hilma af Klint and Piet Mondrian: Forms of Life is at the Tate Modern until 3 September. Book here.

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