London Calling
London Walks connecting.
This is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets Ahead.
Story time. History time.
It’s June 25th, 2026.
Fasten your seatbelts, ladies and gentlemen. There may be some turbulence.
We’ve got some serious time-travelling coming up.
NOW.
Back we go, 205 years.
Those aren’t snowflakes you’re seeing outside your window.
They’re the torn-off monthly pages of more than two centuries of calendars.
All right, we’re beginning our glide now.
Coming in low over London.
Just up ahead…
June 25th, 1821.
And down there, where we’re going, London’s going absolutely berserk.
Not metaphorically.
Literally.
Trumpets. Cannon fire. Velvet. Gold braid. Diamonds. Drums. Liveried servants. Peers. Bishops. Soldiers. Heralds. Horses. Silk stockings. Ostrich feathers. Acres of ermine.
And in the middle of it all, puffed up like a prize pigeon in a jewel box, the Prince Regent at last becomes King.
George IV.
Prinney.
The most extravagant man ever to sit on the British throne.
And on this day, June 25th, 1821, he stages the most lavish coronation Britain had ever seen.
It cost £238,000.
Pause for effect.
That’s over twenty million pounds in today’s money, probably nearer thirty depending how you measure it.
For one day.
One day.
His father’s coronation had cost less than a quarter of that.
Prinney didn’t do modesty. Prinney did spectacle.
And London got the full blast of it.
Because this wasn’t just a coronation.
It was a theatrical production.
A one-day West End run with the entire nation as extras.
And the stage set was Westminster Abbey.
But first, a bit of scene-setting.
George was 58.
Bloated, gout-ridden, deeply unpopular, and so swollen by years of rich living that he had to be laced into his clothes.
This was a man who ate like empire was going out of fashion.
He’d spent fortunes on palaces, paintings, food, wine, furniture and women.
He gave us the Royal Pavilion at Brighton, perhaps the most gloriously over-the-top building in Britain, part fantasy palace, part giant wedding cake after too much champagne.
He had taste, no question.
He just had no brakes.
And for his coronation he wanted something unprecedented.
So he ordered a special coronation outfit.
Crimson velvet.
Gold embroidery.
Diamond buckles.
A hat topped with an enormous spray of ostrich feathers.
And, best of all, pink silk tights.
Pink.
Silk.
Tights.
There he was, the ruler of the greatest empire on earth, dressed like an ageing Hamlet who’d won the lottery.
And London lapped it up.
People had queued all night for a glimpse.
There were grandstands everywhere.
Windows were rented out for ridiculous sums.
Temporary seating sprang up all over Westminster like mushrooms after rain.
Everybody wanted in.
Well… almost everybody.
Because there was one person absolutely not wanted.
His wife.
Caroline of Brunswick.
Now there’s a marriage for you.
George had married Caroline in 1795. They loathed each other on sight.
He supposedly said after first meeting her that she was “very fat and nothing like as handsome as her portrait.”
Strong start.
They separated within a year.
By 1821 he was desperate to keep her away.
He’d even tried, the year before, to divorce her publicly in the spectacular fiasco known as the Pains and Penalties Bill 1820.
It failed.
The public, who disliked George, rather took Caroline’s side.
So what does she do on coronation day?
Turns up.
Of course she does.
Picture it.
The greatest ceremonial day in the kingdom.
Prinney glittering inside.
The peers assembled.
The music swelling.
And outside the west door, Queen Caroline arrives in her carriage and demands entry.
“I am the Queen of England!”
Quite right too.
Except the doors stay shut.
She tries another entrance.
Locked.
Another.
Locked.
Again.
Locked.
It’s one of the great scenes in London history.
Like something out of farce.
The kingdom’s most important woman doing the royal equivalent of trying every handle in Tesco after closing time.
Eventually she gives up and leaves.
Humiliated.
London talked of little else.
And inside?
Oh, inside was pure splendour.
The Abbey blazed with candlelight.
The crown jewels glittered.
The peers looked like a flowerbed designed by madmen.
The Archbishop of Canterbury Cathedral, Charles Manners-Sutton, placed St Edward’s Crown on George’s head.
The choir roared.
The organ thundered.
Trumpets cracked the air.
And Prinney, for one brief blazing moment, got what he’d always wanted.
Adoration.
Or something very like it.
Then came the coronation banquet at Westminster Hall.
And this was the last coronation banquet ever held there.
That’s one of your pub facts.
Last one.
Done after this.
A medieval tradition ending in full Regency excess.
And at the banquet came the best moment of all.
The King’s Champion.
Henry Dymoke.
In full armour.
Riding into Westminster Hall on horseback.
Imagine that.
Horse on stone floor.
Clatter, sparks, snorting.
He throws down his gauntlet and challenges anyone who disputes the King’s right to the throne.
Anyone?
Anyone at all?
Silence.
Funny that.
No takers.
Probably sensible.
And then London staggered home.
Hungover on spectacle.
The streets churned up.
The grandstands dismantled.
The candles burnt down.
The velvet packed away.
And poor Caroline?
Dead less than three weeks later.
July 1821.
Fifty-three years old.
A coda almost as theatrical as the day itself.
So what’s the takeaway?
This:
George IV may not have been a great king.
But he was one of Britain’s great performers.
And on June 25th, 1821, London became his stage.
For one glorious, absurd, over-dressed day.
The city has always known how to put on a show.
And nobody, but nobody, ever put on a show quite like Prinney.
See you tomorrow. Another show tomorrow. The London parade continues.