Britain hasn’t always been good at staging coronations. When George IV was crowned in London’s Westminster Abbey in 1821, boxers had to be employed as bouncers. Queen Victoria’s coronation in 1838 went unrehearsed. As a result, the clergy struggled to keep track of the order of the service and a pair of train-bearers chatted throughout the ceremony. In 1937, a commentator discussing the impending coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth remarked that “an English Coronation is a thing apart from all ceremonies: there is in fact no other spectacle of any kind so impressive, so awe-inspiring, to be witnessed anywhere else in the world.”

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