‘And this feeling of being set aside to a particular task for the whole of her life was something that the Coronation set upon her like a seal,’ Michael Mann confirmed.

Cecil Beaton, who had been commissioned to take the official photographs, gave one of the best and most vivid descriptions of the day as he entered the abbey:

Gold sticks [gentleman at arms of the Queen’s bodyguard] stationed around the cloisters showed us on our way. They were already frozen blue. One of them asked me if I had heard the good news that Hunt had climbed Everest. The iced wind blew in circles round the winding staircase that took me to the rafters and I felt much sympathy for Hunt.

The guests, the peeresses en bloc – in their dark red velvet and foam white, dew spangled with diamonds. The minor royalties and the foreign royalties and representatives of states. The mother of the Duke of Edinburgh, a contrast to the grandeur, in the ash grey draperies of a nun . . . That great old relic, Winston Churchill, lurches forward on unsteady feet, a fluttering mass of white ribbons at his shoulder and white feathers in the hat in his hand. Then the most dramatic and spectacular, at the head of her retinue of white, lily-like ladies, the Queen.

Beaton described her ‘sugar pink cheeks and tightly curled hair and her demeanour of simplicity and humility’, adding, ‘as she walks she allows her heavy skirt to swing backwards and forwards in a beautiful rhythmic effect’.

Rain had fallen solidly throughout most of the ceremony, soaking everyone outside, especially those in uniform who were unable to take any shelter. The Golden Coach was waiting in Dean’s Yard to take the Queen back to Buckingham Palace. But there was profound relief when the great ceremony was over and had gone without a noticeable hitch.

Then as now, both the Queen and Philip enjoy it when things go slightly wrong as their lives are so regimented. They were treated to one such moment in the procession back from the abbey when one of the attendants walking beside the Gold Coach started to head off in the wrong direction towards Hyde Park. John Taylor, the footman walking next to him, noticed straight away and signalled to the Queen, who told the Duke, who yelled out of the window at Taylor, ‘Where does that man think he is going? Get him back!’ Nothing had been left to chance, so the Duke had a walkie-talkie next to him on the upholstered seat of the coach so he could coordinate their arrival down to the second, but even he couldn’t get to the footman, so a lot of discreet signalling went on.