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Hello, when King Charles is crowned in Westminster Abbey next week, it will be the first time much of the UK population will ever have seen the centuries-old traditions that surround the anointing of a monarch.

It will be a day of ceremony and history, at times of solemnity, and for many a celebration

and an occasion to remember. The nation's story is often divided up into phases marked by the names

of monarchs, their reigns, symbols of what a particular time brought us, the people. It's an

artifice, of course, in our modern era when the monarch no longer

rules over us. But is that link to our past something that roots us, something anchoring and

valuable? Or is it simply strange that we have children knowing from a young age that they will

one day be our head of state? Do we need a monarchy? That's what we're here to discuss.

Welcome to the today debate.

Welcome to everyone in the audience who booked their places here without knowing what our talking

point would be.

And welcome to the five people on the stage of the radio theatre with me.

Billy Bragg, the singer and songwriter, is well known for being a lifelong left-winger.

After meeting the late Queen in 2007, he said he'd never called himself a Republican,

and campaigning against the monarchy

distracts us from addressing the issue of where power really lies.

Juliet Samuel is a columnist for The Times.

She's written that a monarchy keeps in our lives the beauty of allegory and symbolism,

the lion and the unicorn, the rose and the thistle, and allows us to turn away at least momentarily

from the ghastiness of office carpets, call centres and traffic jams.

I'm looking at our office carpet now, Juliet, hoping it's not too offensive.

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