Nick Cave defends his choice to attend King Charles III coronation

Four days ago, it was announced that Nick Cave would be among the many people attending King Charles III's coronation, as part of a delegation representing Australia, alongside Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese, soccer player Sam Kerr, comedian Adam Hills, and artist Jasmine Coe. Some of his fans wrote to his newsletter wondering why he had chosen to do so.

In classic Cave fashion, his response was slightly sardonic: "I’ll make this a quick one because I’ve got to work out what I am going to wear to the Coronation."

He continued: "I am not a monarchist, nor am I a royalist, nor am I an ardent republican for that matter; 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."

He went on to describe a time where he met Queen Elizabeth, "at an event at Buckingham Palace for ‘Aspirational Australians living in the UK’", and how he was enamoured by the Queen, who he describes as "the most charismatic woman I have ever met", noting that he cried whilst watching her funeral on TV 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," he stated towards the end of the newsletter before reflecting on what a younger version of himself might've thought of the whole affair.

"Well, 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. Deranged, but cute."