Nick Cave has denied being a monarchist or a royalist after it was revealed he is attending the coronation of King Charles III, saying he “hold[s] an inexplicable emotional attachment to the royals”.
Writing in his newsletter the Red Hand Files, in reply to letters from three Australians and one Brit – some incredulous at the news he would be attending the coronation as part of the Australian delegation – Cave described himself as “not a monarchist, nor am I a royalist, nor am I an ardent republican for that matter”.
But he added “what I am also not is so spectacularly incurious about the world and the way it works, so ideologically captured, so damn grouchy, as to refuse an invitation to what will more than likely be the most important historical event in the UK of our age. Not just the most important, but the strangest, the weirdest.”
Cave is attending the coronation on Saturday in Westminster Abbey alongside Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese, footballer Sam Kerr, comedian Adam Hills, the governor general, and a number of other representatives from his country of birth.
In his newsletter, Cave described once meeting Queen Elizabeth II at an event in Buckingham Palace, saying she “seemed almost extraterrestrial and was the most charismatic woman I have ever met. Maybe it was the lighting, but she actually glowed.”
He revealed, “to my bafflement”, he had cried while watching the queen’s funeral on television last year.
“I guess what I am trying to say is that, beyond the interminable but necessary debates about the abolition of the monarchy, I hold an inexplicable emotional attachment to the Royals – the strangeness of them, the deeply eccentric nature of the whole affair that so perfectly reflects the unique weirdness of Britain itself. I’m just drawn to that kind of thing – the bizarre, the uncanny, the stupefyingly spectacular, the awe-inspiring.”
In reply to the letter writer from the UK, who asked, “What would the young Nick Cave have thought of that?!”, Cave wrote “the young Nick Cave was, in all due respect to the young Nick Cave, young, and like many young people, mostly demented, so I’m a little cautious around using him as a benchmark for what I should or should not do. He was cute though, I’ll give him that.”
Cave was born and raised in Australia, but has lived in Britain for years. In 2017, he was named an Officer of the Order of Australia – an honour established in 1975 by Elizabeth II.
Charles’ coronation will be the first coronation since Elizabeth II was crowned in 1953.
