“One letter in particular was very embarrassing. It was from a member of the Royal family and it started, ‘How kind of the King and Queen to come to your event…’”
Dame Penny held the sword upright for close to an hour.
She said of the resulting attention: “It was directed to me, but it wasn’t about me.” Instead, she explained, the Coronation inspired a sense of community and connection in the British public.
Dame Penny said she believed that the King gave her a prominent role because she was a woman – the first female Lord President in history.
She said: “The King clearly wanted [the Coronation] to feel relevant to today. And he thought about whom he wanted to carry his regalia. He wanted the whole of Britain represented… there were people from the military, the charity sector, people who devoted their lives to service.
“And I have to say, I was Lord President at the time and I’m not sure necessarily that, if I was a bloke, whether the whole of the Lord President role would have been kept in.
“But I was obviously the first woman to do that, so they kept the whole role in.”
She added: “The Coronation did change my life, not just UK-wise but globally as well, and it’s nice. Normally, if you’re a politician, the first thing people say to you is that there aren’t enough dog poo bins or whatever issue they want to raise with you. [Now] usually the first thing they mention is the Coronation.”
‘A moment of great peril’
Failing that, Dame Penny said, people mentioned her appearance on the 2014 TV diving competition Splash!
Dame Penny was appointed as Lord President of the Privy Council on September 6 2022, two days before Queen Elizabeth II’s death. She was so new to the role that she had to Google “Accession Council” before leading the meeting on Sept 10 to formally declare King Charles III as monarch.
When the proclamation was made afterwards from a balcony at St James’s Palace, Dame Penny said she breathed a sigh of relief.
“I knew from our security documents that we had identified the moment we lost [Queen Elizabeth II] as a moment of great peril for the country. It wasn’t a foregone conclusion that people would accept the new King,” she said.
“It was against the political carnage of the Tory leadership contest, and then Liz Truss coming to office. And I thought, if I mess up, if any of us mess up, this could trigger a whole raft of very bad things.”
‘Thousands cheering’
When the proclamation was made, Dame Penny said she “could hear over the Palace wall thousands cheering for the King, and I just knew it was going to be all right.”
Dame Penny was touted as a future Conservative Party leader after her role in the coronation, but went on to lose her Portsmouth North seat to Labour at the general election.
The former defence secretary had written a book, Pomp and Circumstance: Why Britain’s Traditions Matter, which examined the monarchy, Parliament and other parts of national life.
‘Quite critical’
She told the festival audience that she was “quite critical” of the House of Lords.
“There are good people in there doing really important work, scrutinising legislation and often improving it dramatically, but most of those people are from a very small geographical area, usually London and the South East. They come from a very narrow range of backgrounds.
“I think it needs to have a broader range of people coming into it. And it should not be a retirement home for politicians,” said Dame Penny, who suggested that MPs want a peerage because “when people come to the end of their Commons career they’re terrified about what they’re going to do next”.
Dame Penny was asked if royal tradition had contributed to Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor believing that he could behave with impunity, protected by his mother.
She replied: “There are lots of issues around that particular individual and how he has chosen to live his life, and he is facing the consequences of those actions.
“I have also raised questions… as someone that has had close protection myself; I find it hard to believe that people weren’t flagging these things earlier. So I think there are very serious questions to answer.
“But those things, and the actions of that individual, are so far removed from his brothers and sisters, I cannot begin to tell you.”
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.telegraph.co.uk ’
