British Books

We sat on the love seat, my sister and I, with our feet outstretched and devoured books on the kings and queens of England. Daddy loved the Brits. He subscribed, for as long as I can remember, to the Illustrated London News (ILN). And, how we loved those magazines.

I still have an affinity for the English Commonwealth and while I'm not a Diana watcher I was enthralled with the wedding and watched it on TV back in 1982. I vaguely remember watching the wedding of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip on TV -- I was taking a piano lesson at Hegaman's at the time, and they had the TV turned into the wedding. Hmmm. Or was it the coronation? No, I think it was the wedding. Which came first? The coronation or the wedding?

Needless to say the ILN had pages and pages and pages of pictures of the royals. And the coronation was a special issue which daddy kept for a very, very long time -- until it wore out, I guess. Although we were taught early to treasure books and magazines and to handle them properly, and keep them like new for as long as possible, they would still get to a point where too much handling left them in a state of no-longer-being-able-to-be-repaired.

I have three of those books in my home now, The King of England (about Queen Elizabeth II's father), The Little Princesses (about Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret); and The Queen of England (about Queen Elizabeth and her ascension to the throne). I do have a book about the wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Diana, but it's not a classic, and there is little text in it. The three older books are mostly text (history) with several pictures in the middle of the book.

My sister and I are checking out the sequence of events mentioned above -- coronation vs. marriage, which came first. I'll get back to this in a second. Okay, here's the scoop. Queen Elizabeth was married to Prince Philip in 1947 -- therefore I did NOT watch the wedding on TV, I mean I was four years old. What would I know about a queen getting married.

She was crowned Queen of England in 1952, so that must be what I watched.