In May 2023, hundreds of millions of people worldwide tuned in to see the coronation of King Charles III at Westminster Abbey. But how many royal watchers know that far from Westminster, in distant Cumbria, there’s a British island with its very own king?
For the past 170 or so years, the 50-acre Isle of Piel has appointed its own monarch. On the tip of the Furness peninsula, the little windswept island lies half a mile from the Cumbrian mainland, on the edge of Morecambe Bay.
The incumbent of Piel’s throne
