Coronation Take From Left Field

The Australian Government was able to invite 14 official guests to the Coronation, a long way short of the 250 that attended the 1953 version. Most were well known expats living or currently working in the UK including Matildas captain Sam Kerr; comedian Adam Hills,  activist and Oxford student Yasmin Poole and medical researchers. Unconventional songwriter and musician, Nick Cave (now 65), had the quirkiest take of all. After being criticised for accepting his invitation, Cave published a lengthy reasoning for his attendance. He described it as “the most important event in the UK of our age, not just the most important but the strangest and weirdest”…he described meeting the Queen – in a salmon twinset – as almost “extra-terrestrial” and her as “the most charismatic woman I’ve ever met”…..he had wept as her coffin, stripped of its royal insignia, descended into the vault at her funeral. He wrote he had “an inexplicable attraction to the royals – the strangeness of them, the deeply eccentric nature of the whole affair that so perfectly reflects the unique weirdness of Britain itself”. Reflecting on the event, several weeks later, Cave said he felt conflicted emotions during the service: extremely bored…awestruck… amused…angered and extremely moved by the music! WfaAR: And there you have it.