Twenty million Britons watched at home as Elizabeth II, 27, was crowned in Westminster Abbey, a ceremony unchanged in essentials since 1066. The BBC's decision to televise it, over the objections of Winston Churchill, transformed the monarchy into a mass media institution and drew an estimated 277 million viewers globally.
Rain fell steadily over London on the morning of June 2, 1953, but crowds who had camped along the processional route for days refused to budge. Inside Westminster Abbey, the ceremony followed a script largely unchanged since William the Conqueror's coronation, complete with anointing oil, the Stone of Scdestiny, and St Edward's Crown, an object so heavy that the young queen had practiced wearing it around Buckingham Palace beforehand.
Winston Churchill, then prime minister, initially opposed television cameras inside the Abbey, fearing the solemnity would be cheapened. Elizabeth herself overruled him. The gamble paid off spectacularly: an estimated 27 million people in Britain watched on borrowed and newly purchased television sets, often crowded a dozen deep into neighbors' front rooms, while millions more listened on radio across the Commonwealth.
The timing carried extra symbolism. News arrived that same morning that a British-led expedition had conquered Mount Everest, and newspapers trumpeted it as a coronation gift from a dying empire trying to remember its glory. Elizabeth would go on to reign for 70 years, but nothing quite matched the theatrical certainty of that grey June morning when a young woman took vows her forebears had taken for a thousand years.
Key people: Elizabeth II, Winston Churchill, Prince Philip