So ends the “New Elizabethan Age”.

First, I would like to add my own, trivial, thanks to our late Sovereign Lady, Queen Elizabeth. I believe she has been amongst our most loved and successful Monarchs.

Queen Elizabeth took the United Kingdom through difficult and transitional times. How could the British people watching the shaky black and white images of her Coronation in 1953 have foreseen coming events over the next seven decades?

Elizabeth’s reign ends with a very different, more diverse and also more divided Britain than they could have imagined. She was, in many ways, the corner stone and cement of our islands. She also played a similar role in many other countries around the world.

Thank you Ma’am.

On Elizabeth the First’s death, a Scottish king was crowned as king of England. The reign of his son, Charles, lead to civil war and, finally, his execution, followed by a (thankfully) brief outbreak of Republicanism.

The Restoration of the Monarchy lead, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, to the formal Union of the Kingdoms of Scotland and England, a union I fear may not last much longer.

We now have the namesake of that earlier Charles taking over as our our Sovereign. I wish him well in what is likely to be a very fractious period for the islands of Britain. He comes to the throne at a time when our country and government are deeply divided and lacking common purpose.

Britain faces unprecedented times in terms of her place in an increasingly dangerous world, with environmental and geo-political events posing challenges we will struggle to overcome.

Good Luck King Charles III, Long Live the King

John Thorne

Broadmayne