Lighting up the Nation

From the King's Coronation.

Written by  Daljit Nagra.

We’re Lighting Up The Nation

No one’s an island when each is at home

in the hope and glory! Born free – we’re a plucky bunch

of every shade. From the bronze of the Celts

across our Roman roads to Windrush and beyond,

today, just now, the spectacular parades of light

travelling from Windsor to iconic heartlands across the realm

so the kingdom be unified. Imagine Edinburgh Castle

near monuments for Scott and Burns, or imagine

across the waters of Belfast our titanic dockyard

and the blood-sweat, the toil that launched a thousand ships

over there’s Blackpool for Punch & Judy, glad rags

for the tango and foxtrot, and out for a pint of Newkie Brown

by the Gateshead Bridge, that harp of the Toon, the Tyne – it’s all mine

now all Yorkshire beams from the hall of seven-hilled Sheffield,

now my heart’s with the famed anthem, the land of my fathers

at Cardiff Millennium! Everywhere I look, from the golden

miles of Leicester with their chicken masalas and jollof rice

to an eco-haven amid the botanical gardens of Cambridge

like the oasis at Eden with its rainforest under a dome,

to our bold promise of the cliffs of Dover, everywhere I look,

within our shores, I feel a new phase, new chapter must begin,

just now, so let’s light up the nation like a smile!

Daljit Nagra, 2023

Daljit Nagra’s poem was commissioned by the BBC for the Coronation Concert’s ‘Lighting up the Nation’ live sequence. Read by James Nesbitt.

Watch from 1.24.26.