The 1971 Broadcast

Location:  Buckingham Palace

Produced by:  BBC

Theme:  Elizabeth II talks about the importance of family, with a particular emphasis on children and the future.  As part of her theme of blending the the past and the future with the present, during the Broadcast Her Majesty looks at a photograph album with her two younger children, Prince Andrew and Prince Edward.  The Queen expresses her belief that peace on earth can be found through the message of Christmas.

Commentary:  In 1958, in her second (and last) live television Christmas broadcast, Elizabeth II politely acknowledged, but declined, public requests for her young children Prince Charles and Princes Anne to appear in the Broadcast.  After giving the matter some thought, the Queen and Prince Philip had felt that an appearance on live television would be too much of an ordeal and (given the unpredictability of small children) too much of a risk for two so young.  By 1971 things were different;  the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh were far more experienced, not just as monarch and consort but as parents.  The two younger princes had enjoyed a more relaxed family upbringing than their older siblings; also, the age of pre-recording meant that editing was possible and with the trusted Richard Cawston in charge of production, the Queen and her husband felt confident enough to allow princes Andrew and Edward to take part in a Broadcast.

Prince Andrew (then aged eleven) and Prince Edward (then seven) are undeniably the stars of the production, in what has become one of the iconic sequences in the history of Elizabeth II's Christmas broadcasts.  Smartly-dressed and impeccably well-behaved, the two boys do occasionally appear a little underwhelmed by proceedings.  The Queen sits with her two younger children on the Regency Room sofa, a photograph album in front of them.  Her Majesty briefly addresses the camera before she schools her sons in a little family history, a subject on which they seem a little shaky:  they fail to identify their great-grandparents King George V and Queen Mary, while in another photograph they even misidentify their young mother as Princess Anne - Andrew should really have known this stuff by then!  The boys become more attentive when they see a picture of their mother 'life-saving':  'You didn't know I could do that?' asks the Queen.

Once the segment with the young princes is over, the Queen delivers the rest of her speech from behind her desk in the Regency Room.  This would be the default setting for the next four Broadcasts.  The desk is situated in what is still pretty much its usual place today, though  in the late 1980s and early 1990s it would be moved around as David Attenborough experimented with his 'Christmassy' sets.

The Regency Room of Buckingham Palace had been used as the location for a Broadcast once before, in 1962, though this year would begin its long twenty year dominance as the 'default' location of the annual production.  The Queen's private sitting room, used the previous year, was never going to be a viable long-term option as a recording venue;  it would have been disruptive for the Queen and restrictive for the production team.  The Regency Room seemed like a perfect solution;  not strictly speaking part of the royal family's private apartments, yet not as public or imposingly grand as Buckingham Palace's more well-known state rooms, it is described as a 'comfortable green-coloured ground-floor sitting room, dominated by Strochling's portrait of Princess Sophia, [normally] a place for royal drinks.'  The Regency Room would provide a cosy 'at home with the Queen' feel, allowing the production team to experiment creatively and test for lighting and sound without getting too much in the way of the Monarch and her family.

Elizabeth II's camera style seems notably more relaxed and self-assured than the previous year;  Her Majesty's confidence as a television performer would improve as the decade progressed, perhaps helped by the familiar presence of Richard Cawston.  In this broadcast the Queen at last seems at home with the autocue/teleprompter:  although a paper script was in front of her (and would remain as a stand-by for a few more years) she does not refer to it at all.

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