I had no memory of ever watching footage of this ceremony before then. In one of my lunchtime walks around the Tower, I entered an odd antechamber with a TV set on a table which always and only played a VHS of the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. It was clearly a very ancient ritual, full of the weird symbolism I’d been reading about I suppose they ’re best described as “Western Esotericism” - a ragbag collection of subterranean spiritualities which was particularly popular in literary circles in the late 19th c entur y, although it claims a lineage “from time immemorial” - drawing on ancient paganism, the Greek and Roman pantheons, mystical Christianity, renaissance astrology and so on, ad infinitum. I continued to visit this chapel on Remembrance Day each Nov ember for a few years afterwards.Īround the same time I was reading about all sorts of things which I would now condemn. I was fascinated by the Prayer Book services in the Tower’s chapel, where the Beefeaters made up most of the congregation. Chatting to Beefeaters was a particular highlight they might share hair-raising stories about their times in active service, and they occasionally invited you into one of their little almshouses next to the Tower for a cup of tea and a biscuit. The work itself was pretty soul destroying, but in my breaks I could wander anywhere I wanted within the Tower’s precincts. One summer, when I was a student, I worked at the Tower of London for a few weeks.
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