LEILA FADEL, HOST:
For most British citizens, Queen Elizabeth is the only monarch they've ever known. But there are still many people who remember Elizabeth as a young princess and who watched her grand coronation as queen.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: On what must surely be the greatest day of her life, Queen Elizabeth drives to her coronation.
AVRIL SHATTUCK: I'm Avril Shattuck (ph), and I'm 75. We were the only people in our street to have a TV, and my parents invited all the street to come in to watch her coronation. And my mother hardly watched the coronation because she was too busy making sandwiches for everybody.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Imagine, if you can, our young queen's feelings, as she's slowly borne towards the hourslong ceremony consecrating her as queen of all the nations and all the races over which she holds sovereignty.
SHATTUCK: It was just lovely to see her walk down with this golden dress and this fantastic cloak behind her. Then there's me. I think I once tried to copy what she did as a child. My mother had a wedding - her wedding dress, and I used to get in it and march up and down in it.
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CLIVE BENDER: Clive Bender (ph), 78 years old. I was 8 years old when the king died.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: The passing of King George VI came as a sudden and most grievous shock to his people all over the world.
BENDER: We all had to wear a black armband on our school blazer.
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BENDER: Well, he died in February, the king, and the coronation was in June. I can remember the procession. The one thing that everybody remembers is Queen Salote of Tonga, which is in the Pacific Ocean. And it was pouring, the rain. She was in an open-top carriage on her own. And she wouldn't put an umbrella up, so everybody could see her.
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BENDER: We do put on a good show in this country of pageantry. It's the way we do things here.
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BARBARA STONE: My name's Barbara Stone (ph), 92. My husband and I, we just got engaged. And we're walking up Regent Street, and we saw the Union Jacks at half-mast. And we went into a jewelers, and they said that the king had just died.
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STONE: My father rented a television set, and we invited the neighbors in, and we watched the queen on this television.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: Now the archbishop moves to the theater for the ceremony of recognition.
GEOFFREY FISHER: I here present unto you, Queen Elizabeth, your undoubted queen.
UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: God save Queen Elizabeth.
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STONE: She had a very tiny waist and this beautiful dress and with all the different flowers from all the different nations that she was in control of. It looked very beautiful.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Prince Charles and Princess Anne watched enthralled as the troops swung down the Mall around the Victoria Memorial.
STONE: I think she was extremely good. I mean, it's going to be a completely different world now.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: And so this day of days most memorable comes to an end, and with it begins a new era, the new Elizabethan age.
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FADEL: Memories of Queen Elizabeth's coronation from some people who watched it 70 years ago. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.