Why I fear the new King will distance the monarchy from the people, rather than head a new age - Jayne Dowle

After that pen incident when he acceded to the throne following the death of his mother in September, we all know by now that Charles is not blessed with patience.

In his defence, of course, we all say things to our nearest and dearest in private which we would never want replaying to millions of strangers.

Was it an invasion of privacy? It could be argued that lip-readers at Royal events are the new paparazzi. It’s cute when they pick up that that young Princess Charlotte calls her father ‘papa’ and chastises her mischievous younger brother, Prince Louis, less appealing when we hear the irritation in the voice of the man who has waited all of his life for this unsurpassable moment, and still finds something to sound ungrateful about.

I feel uneasy, I will admit. I want our new monarch to herald a positive Carolean age, but already, I find myself wishing for the sureness and certainty of the past. When I stood on the Mall to wave my Union Jack for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee last June, and returned to Horseguards’ Parade a few short months later to pay my respects as her funeral cortege filed past, it was clearly the end of a very long era, in both public and personal terms.

For five decades, since I crowded into my aunty’s front room, with half the street, to watch Princess Anne marry Captain Mark Phillips on colour television, I have followed the Royal family with interest. Sometimes it’s definitely not been fashionable, and I’ve had to do many tricky mental balancing acts to reconcile constitutional monarchy with modern democracy.

Now for the first time, I don’t feel quite as surefooted, although I am trying hard.

At home, mums and assorted teenagers assembled for a Coronation brunch with bacon sandwiches and buck’s fizz, and we thoroughly enjoyed the spectacle, cheering every time Penny Mordaunt appeared with her sword, a poster girl for middle-aged women if ever there was one.

We mused on silly, delusional Prince Harry, alone in his crumpled suit, raised our eyebrows at the necessity of a Prime Minister's speech, and with two A Level history students in the room, debated why our new monarch felt it so important to stress that the throne of the United Kingdom was safe in Protestant hands

I thought of my friends on both sides of sectarianism in Northern Ireland and felt a little trepidatious; here was a new monarch promising to serve his people, his anointing with holy oil a symbol of his importance as a unifying force for good.

Yet with every step of the Coronation, and its aftermath, I was reminded not of a great coming together, but of the lines that divide.

The arrests of six anti-monarchy protestors in London on Saturday also chilled me; the law on public order had only been tightened up the previous week.

His Majesty, clearly an intelligent and emotional man, should make tolerance his watchword. And whilst his stated aim to slim down the monarchy is admirable, the official ‘working Royals’ photo shoot made my heart sink, not soar at the prospect of a progressive new regime at Buckingham Palace.

As I say, I’ve been an avid Royal watcher all my life and there were elderly people – only four of the assembled dozen were under the age of 40 – lined up in their regalia even I didn’t recognise.

Princess Alexandra, Lady Ogilvy, at 86, was one of the late Queen’s closest friends, it is reported. With respect, this distinguished gentlewoman doesn’t look as if she’s up to sprinting around the country cutting ribbons every other day.

Where were cheery Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, I wondered? Then the penny dropped, as the daughters of divorced parents, one of them the disgraced Prince Andrew, they have been precluded from Royal duties under their uncle’s reign.

What I fear for the new King and his reign is growing public indifference, a collective switching off between ‘them’ and ‘us’. I hope that he will realise that privilege works both ways.​​​​​​​