Charles III, the Priest-King

London

A global audience watched the coronation of King Charles III last week, but no one could see the most important part. Behind a hand-woven screen in Westminster Abbey, Justin Welby, archbishop of Canterbury, took up the oldest item in the coronation regalia—a golden spoon—and anointed the king’s hands, chest and head with holy oil. There could be no more explicit proof of Walter Bagehot’s maxim that monarchy, if it’s to preserve its mystique, “must not let daylight in upon the magic.”