Farrukh Dhondy | ‘Flummery’ at King’s coronation, but no Kohinoor in Camilla’s crown

“O Bachchoo why rely on saints To perform miracles and prove That there’s a place of no complaints With life in an eternal groove? But I come across the word “flummery” now to describe the preparations for King Charles’ coronation in May, the preparations for which are even now proceeding with announcements from Buckingham Palace to the media about these, often ousting the news about austerity measures, the transgender debate, Hedgie Sunak’s compromises in government, the crisis in the National Health Service, the outrageous increases in the mortgage payments of people who can’t afford them, the strikes of lower-paid essential workers such as nurses and ambulance-personnel…. The progress of preparations for this coronation is a sort of resume of what this great British nation -- “This royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle, This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, This other Eden, demi-paradise, This fortress built by Nature for herself against infection and the hand of war, This happy breed of men, this little world, This precious stone set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall… Or as a moat defensive to a house, Against the envy of less happier lands… This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England” -- thinks of itself or is. Press reports said: “Modernisers in his court wanted him to cut through the pomp and flummery…” The Collins dictionary doesn’t define the word but the Internet tells me that it’s an elaborate pudding. So that’s a metaphor, but King Charles III has rejected the advice to avoid it and has now clearly made a choice to celebrate his coronation with elaborate flummery in order to assert the popular nationalistic “tribalism” of this realm.