'Royal family needs to change and modernise if it has any chance of surviving'

It was a cornucopia of colour and pageantry, a glittering ceremony infused with centuries of symbolism and enriched by spine-tingling music.

So perhaps it was inevitable that, as the Coronation of King Charles III reached its magnificent climax, I felt a swell of patriotism at the turning of a page in our great national story.

I certainly hadn’t expected to.