FEW novels are as phantasmagorical as Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass.

This is the sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

Within the novel itself, we have the roguish twins Tweedledum and Tweedledee, reciting to Alice The Walrus and the Carpenter poem: “The time has come, the Walrus said, to talk of many things: of shoes and ships and sealing-wax, of cabbages and kings”.

Next month the UK will experience an event more surreal than anything imagined by Lewis Carroll – the coronation of King Charles III.

On Saturday, May 6, a 74-year-old man will have a crown of jewels placed upon his head before the great and the good, before being ferried about the streets of London in a carriage made of gold. If that isn’t as whacky as Alice in Wonderland I don’t know what is.

The congregation at Westminster Abbey will be invited to say the coronation prayer, which reportedly includes the words: “That we and all his subjects (duly considering whose authority he hath) may faithfully serve and humbly obey him.”

Coronation events can be traced back 1000 years in Scotland and England and were originally a necessary legal step to becoming a king or queen.

Nowadays of course they are ceremonial as Charles became King by operation of law upon the passing of his mother, the late Queen Elizabeth.

Historically, coronations have enabled the church to play a central role in state events, with the monarch being anointed with holy oil to signal the conferment of God’s grace upon the sovereign.

Curiously, the UK is now the only European monarchy to retain such a ceremony. Why have it? Legally it’s not necessary so what’s its purpose?

That question got me thinking. The coronation is a state event, so it is paid for by the taxpayer. Some estimates have put the cost at £100 million.

That’s an extraordinary sum of money for a lavish ceremony during an ongoing cost-of-living crisis.

This isn’t 1953 when a young 25-year-old Queen had her coronation – interestingly at half the

relative cost. We’re told in 2023 security is a bigger concern and is costly.

The Queen’s coronation was just eight years after the Second World War and there was clearly a bit of a Knees Up Mother Brown spirit back then as people rebuilt their lives and communities after the horror of war.

We’re 70 years on. I can’t help but think how out of place this opulent event looks in a modern age.

The mood in Glasgow seems to be complete indifference to the royal coronation.

There have been no applications to Glasgow City Council for a coronation street party licence.

One suspects it will be difficult to avoid the coronation with wall-to-wall television coverage on the horizon in three weeks’ time. Perhaps a walk in Scotland’s magnificent hills and glens or a weekend away on a remote Scottish island might provide solace.

I do think people should care because the institution of the British monarchy is not benign.

Walter Bagehot, the economist and essayist, wrote about the importance of the monarchy in his 1867 book, The English Constitution.

Mr Bagehot said: “Above all things our royalty is to be reverenced, and if you begin to poke about it you cannot reverence it … its mystery is its life. We must not let in daylight upon magic.”

The ship on royal magic sailed a long time ago. The awful treatment of Princess Diana, scandals involving Prince Andrew and more latterly the exposes in Prince Harry’s novel, Spare.

I always remember reading Mr Bagehot as a Strathclyde University undergraduate and recall his position of the monarch as a necessary legal figurehead for our unwritten British constitution. I quickly realised the truth was more complex.

The monarch and royal family exert real power and influence in our society. Make no mistake about that.

They sit at the pinnacle of an archaic system of privilege and patronage through a discredited honours system and their influence is embedded in our system of government and indeed through our entire legal system.

Over the weekend the research body Civitas published its research showing a 40% reduction in UK ribbon-cutting and hand-shaking activities by the royals over the past decade. The concern is the royals could “disappear from public view”.

We’re warned scandals, feuds and lack of a public presence might herald the demise of the royal institution. Well, the public presence issue is about to get a massive boost with the coronation event.

They say there is no such thing as bad publicity but I’m not so sure that royal pomp and decadence paid for by taxpayers will endear more people to the monarchy.