The Queen’s Christmas Broadcast, 1957 — Restored in HD Colour

See this historic moment in stunningly restored colour — Twenty five years after her grandfather King George V made the first ever Royal Christmas Speech over radio in 1932, Queen Elizabeth used the new medium of television to join millions of people in their homes on Christmas afternoon in 1957, a tradition which has been carried out in the same form for 65 years since. Broadcast from the Long Library at the Sandringham Estate in Norfolk, the Queen in her speech shared warm sentiments of wishing to use this new technology to be more accessible to her people, to be more personal than just a distant, governing figure. This moment would be a significant step in the modernization of the monarchy. The Queen’s final Christmas broadcast took place in 2021, and with her passing in 2022, her son King Charles III will continue on the annual tradition.