No matter where they are in the world, when someone refers to the Queen, they almost always mean Elizabeth II, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith.
This photo of the young queen hangs in Nottingham’s Council House (Lee Haywood/Flickr).
A photo from the coronation in June 1953 is in this BBC photo essay of her life.
C.S. Lewis watched Elizabeth’s coronation on TV and wrote this in a letter:
. . . the Queen herself appeared to be quite overwhelmed by the sacramental side of it. . . .
The pressing of that huge, heavy crown on that small, young head becomes a sort of symbol of the situation of humanity itself: humanity called by God to be his vice-regent and high priest on earth, yet feeling so inadequate. As if he said, “In my inexorable love I shall lay upon the dust that you are glories and dangers and responsibilities beyond your understanding.”
C.S. Lewis on the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II (via Mindy Belz)
Celebrities: “But over time, it seemed, the fallen leaders managed to accrue immense social power without true proximity. They cultivated an image of spiritual importance while distancing themselves from embodied, in-person means of knowing and being known.” Gina Dalfonzo reviews Celebrities for Jesus: How Personas, Platforms, and Profits Are Hurting the Church by Katelyn Beaty.
A Writer’s Regrets: A.N. Wilson, who has published over 40 novels and other books, has released a memoir. He “says that he cannot believe that the ‘young fogey’ of the 1970s and 1980s, dapper, elegantly suited, was him. He describes himself as thrustingly ambitious, full of himself and unfaithful not only to his wife but to his own better nature.”
Stolen Books: Joel Miller has a roundup of stolen book news, such as the Gospel manuscript that was taken during WWI and how Bibles were a common stolen good when he worked at a bookstore in California.
“Growing up, I often heard that the medieval church used to chain up Bibles so average people couldn’t read it. It’s a common myth. The reality is that illiteracy was the norm, average people had better things to do than read, and books were only chained to keep clerics, monks, and visiting scholars from stealing valuable property—or reading in the latrine.”
Religious History: “. . . the more you got to know the men, the more human did they become, for better or worse; you were more concerned to find out why they thought as they did than to prove it was wrong.”
Photo: 7-Up Building, Portland, Oregon. 1976. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.