Britain’s King Charles meets well-wishers during a walkabout on the Mall outside Buckingham Palace ahead of his and Camilla, Queen Consort’s coronation, in London, Britain, May 5, 2023.
Protesters took to the streets of central London on Saturday, chanting “not my King” as the coronation procession of newly crowned Charles III passed by.
More than 11 000 police were deployed to stamp out any attempted disruption, and the Republic campaign group said its leader Graham Smith had been arrested along with five other protesters.
King Charles III was anointed and crowned on Saturday in Britain’s biggest ceremonial event for seven decades, a sumptuous display of pageantry dating back 1 000 years.
In front of a congregation of about 100 world leaders and a television audience of millions, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the spiritual leader of the Anglican Church, slowly placed the 360-year-old St Edward’s Crown on Charles’ head as he sat upon a 14th-century throne in Westminster Abbey.
Charles, 74, automatically succeeded his mother as king on her death last September and the coronation is not essential but regarded as a means to legitimize the monarch in a public way.
VIDEO | KING CHARLES III CORONATION l John Bevir updates:
