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Title: Crown, Orb & Sceptre: The True Stories of English Coronations by David Hilliam ISBN: 0-7509-3072-1 Publisher: Sutton Publishing Pub. Date: 01 January, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $11.99

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Average Customer Rating: 4 (1 review)

Rating: 4
Summary: And now for something slightly different
Comment: If you're looking for something beyond the usual royal biographies, or as a companion to UK history, this could be it.

Here's the lowdown on 1000 years of coronations stretching back to the crowning by St Dunstan of the Saxon King Edgar in Bath Abbey in 973 - which, incidentally, provided some of the words still used today - to the crowning of Queen Elizabeth II on 2 June 1953. Nice bite-sized nuggets, each monarch being handled individually. Coronations of noteworthy consorts are include e.g., Anne Boleyn.

It helps if you have a passing acquaintance with some of the history. But it's not essential. Hilliam places each individual coronation and monarch in context, in easily readable narrative. There's plenty of trivia, both familiar and non.

The content ranges from sumptuous to humorous - such as a splendidly-attired Piers Gaveston outraging envious fellow courtiers by carrying the St Edward crown at the coronation of his King and lover, Edward II; or Queen Victoria's Archbishop of Canterbury accidentally omitting a couple of pages and being forced by her to return to the beginning of the section. There are various one-page topical essays, e.g., one on the original King's Stone at Kingston, whereon crownings reputedly first occurred, and another on the Stone of Scone - now returned from Westminster Abbey to its native Scotland.

The appendices include a simplified, but useful, genealogy, plus the Form of the Coronation, and also a rundown of the regalia (i.e. crowns, sceptres, spurs - the lot, which may be seen in the Tower of London).

This is genial, informative, entertaining - and fun.