English Abbey Experiences a Crowd

Wow! What a weekend.

The coronation of King Charles III at London’s Westminster Abbey lived up to every expectation with pomp, pageantry, and ceremony watched by hundreds of millions worldwide.

From our rarefied enclave, all eyes were undoubtedly on Riven Rock resident Prince Harry, who blasted his family in his bestselling book Spare and a Netflix documentary, and where he would be seated in the 1,000-year-old locale.

He ended up in the third row, well away from his older brother William and wife Kate, now the Prince and Princess of Wales, sat between Jack Brooksbank, husband of disgraced Prince Andrew’s daughter Princess Eugenie, and Princess Alexandra, sister of the Duke of Kent and granddaughter of King George V.

The Duke of Sussex’s view was also partially blocked by the monarch’s sister, Princess Anne, who was wearing a large, feathered headpiece directly in front of him.

Harry had flown in just the day before traveling first class on an American Airlines flight from Los Angeles, staying at Frogmore Cottage, his former home. Immediately after the two-hour ceremony, attended by 2,000 people, ended he was whisked away to Heathrow Airport, just a short distance from Windsor Castle, with a police motorcade to avoid any delays catching his British Airways return flight to the U.S. to attend his son Archie’s low key fourth birthday bash at the $15 million eight-acre estate he shares with wife, Meghan Markle, who did not attend the historic British event.

Santa Barbara warbler Katy Perry, who sang with Lionel Richie and opera legend Andrea Bocelli at the coronation concert at Windsor the next day, dressed impressively for the coronation service with a giant lilac fascinator and a large Vivienne Westwood choker as she was escorted into the abbey by British Vogue editor Edward Enninful.

As usual, I was kept busy with media interviews with the top German magazine Bild, and The Sun and Telegraph, two of the U.K.’s top newspapers, as well as TV appearances on KEYT-TV’s morning show with anchor Alys Martinez and KCAL, the Los Angeles CBS affiliate, via Zoom.

The coronation was, by any standard, an extraordinarily historic occasion with Camilla, considered a pariah by the British public in 1997 when Princess Diana died in the tragic Paris car accident, now, 26 years later, is a very popular figure in U.K. opinion polls.