To herald the year that Queen Elizabeth II became Britain’s longest reigning monarch, Kirsty Young takes a unique look at the story of the Royal Christmas broadcast and how the tradition, started by King George V in 1932, has found a place at the heart of Christmas Day.
At 3pm on Christmas day, every year families across the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth gather to watch Her Majesty The Queen deliver her Christmas message.
In this first documentary of its kind, Kirsty Young takes a unique look at the history of the broadcast, and with fascinating archive and interviews uncovers the history of this much-loved Christmas event. Beginning with tentative steps in the early days of the wireless, then providing reassurance during the uncertainty of the Second World War, it has become The Queen’s televised message that we all know and love and reflects the social and technological changes that three generations of the monarchy have witnessed over the past 80 years.
Kirsty talks to Sir David Attenborough, who directed five of The Queen’s Christmas Messages in the 1980s, and also Mark Logue, who has extraordinary diaries and photographs of his grandfather Lionel Logue (the King's speech therapist) who was present at Sandringham for King George VI’s first Christmas broadcast in 1937. The documentary also tells the story of the unknown poet who became an overnight sensation in 1939, when her poem was used in the King's Christmas broadcast.
Very sweet.
