Fifty years ago Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II was crowned sovereign of Great Britain and Northern Ireland according to the ancient ceremony of the Coronation. This elaborate Christian ritual has an extraordinarily long history and the sovereign of the United Kingdom is now the only European monarch still to be crowned according to the full medieval service.

The Coronation ceremony is made up of two parts: in the first, the sovereign is presented to the congregation and swears to govern fairly and uphold the laws of God; in the second part, he or she is anointed with holy oil, invested with the precious objects of the regalia and receives the homage of the congregation. The ritual emerged during the Middle Ages from a combination of Christian, Barbarian and Byzantine traditions and by the eleventh century the essentials of the English Coronation ceremony were well established.

Queen Elizabeth II's Coronation in 1953 was the first to be televised live and 20 million viewers in Britain and around the world witnessed the sacred moment of crowning which solemnized the beginning of her reign and elevation from princess to monarch.