The CROWN AT LAST

How King Charles III, Britain's longest serving heir to the throne, overcame scandal and tragedy to finally reach CORONATION DAY

- JACK ROYSTON

THE CORONATION OF KING CHARLES III ON May 6 is an event that has been 70 years in the making starting from the moment he watched his mother be crowned as queen when he was a four-year-old boy.

As Britain's first new head of state since 1952, Charles has inherited a monarchy under pressure over its colonial history and mired in allegations leveled by his own son, Prince Harry, that have ranged from infighting to unconscious racial bias within the royal family.

Charles, of course, is no stranger to scandal after the very public collapse of his marriage to Princess Diana against the backdrop of his affair with Camilla Parker-Bowles. Now Queen Camilla, she too in a remarkable turn of events will be crowned alongside her husband and with her own grandchildren present at Westminster Abbey on Coronation Day.

King Charles' Early Passions 

THE KING IS PERHAPS BEST KNOWN FOR HIS PASSIONate advocacy on environmental issues, which dates back to 1970 when he took up the cause against plastic pollution long before it was a popular stance.

He told the Countryside Steering Committee for Wales at the time: "When you think that each person produces roughly two pounds of rubbish per day and there are 55 million of us on this island using non-returnable bottles and indestructible plastic containers, it is not difficult to imagine the mountains of refuse that we shall have to deal with somehow."

Fifty years later, in a 2020 speech, he added: "I was considered rather dotty, to say the least, for even suggesting these things, rather like when I set up a reed-bed sewage treatment system at Highgrove all those years ago-that was considered completely mad."