The Christmas Broadcasts Everyone Remembers
From the first televised broadcast in 1957 to the year the Queen admitted 1992 hadn't been much fun, the speeches that actually made history.
Nearly a century of Christmas Broadcasts have gone out from the royal family, most of them gently reflective and quickly forgotten. A handful, though, actually changed something: how the public saw the monarch, what the broadcast was allowed to show, or simply how honest a head of state could be about a bad year. These are the ones that still get replayed.
A young princess, broadcasting before she was ever Queen
Long before her own Christmas Broadcasts began, a fourteen-year-old Princess Elizabeth was already experienced at addressing the nation. On 13 October 1940, she gave her first public speech, a wartime radio address to the children of the Commonwealth broadcast on the BBC’s Children’s Hour from the drawing room at Windsor Castle. Many of those listening had been evacuated away from their own families, and Elizabeth spoke directly to that experience, having herself been moved to Windsor with her younger sister for safety. Princess Margaret joined her at the very end of the broadcast.
It’s a genuinely moving footnote to the Christmas Broadcast story precisely because it isn’t the Christmas Broadcast at all: a separate, one-off wartime address that shows the future Queen already understood, at fourteen, what it meant to speak to a frightened public and be believed.
1932: where the annual tradition started
The Christmas Broadcast tradition itself began on Christmas Day 1932, when King George V spoke live over the wireless from a small office at Sandringham House, addressing the British Empire for the first time in this way. The idea came from Sir John Reith, the BBC’s founding director-general, who wanted a genuinely historic broadcast to launch the new Empire Service, now the BBC World Service.
The script was written by Rudyard Kipling, and the broadcast reached an estimated twenty million listeners. Every broadcast since has descended, in a fairly direct line, from that single wireless address.
1957: seeing the monarch for the first time
The next genuine landmark came twenty-five years later, almost to the day. In 1957, Queen Elizabeth II delivered the Christmas Broadcast’s first televised edition, letting the public see their monarch during the message rather than just hear her. It fell, by neat coincidence, exactly on the anniversary of her grandfather’s original 1932 broadcast.
The numbers were extraordinary for the era: 16.5 million television viewers in Britain, plus another 9.5 million still listening on radio, at the time a bigger combined audience than any programme in British broadcasting history had drawn. The Queen herself spoke about embracing the “new medium,” visibly aware of how significant the moment was.
1991: the year the format broke open
By the early 1990s, the broadcast had started experimenting with a looser structure, mixing the monarch’s spoken address with footage from the year’s royal engagements rather than sticking to a single static shot. It sounds like a small change; at the time it represented a real shift in how personal and visual the monarch’s annual message was allowed to be, moving it further from a formal state address and closer to something more like a year-in-review.
That format, part speech, part highlights reel, became the template most modern broadcasts still follow.
1992: “not a year I shall look back on with undiluted pleasure”
The most quoted broadcast of the Queen’s reign came in 1992, a year that had included a fire at Windsor Castle and the announced separation of Charles and Diana. In her Christmas message that year, the Queen said 1992 was “not a year on which I shall look back with undiluted pleasure,” about as candid as a reigning monarch’s public language gets.
It’s worth being precise here, since the two moments often get merged in retelling: the phrase “annus horribilis” itself was coined a few days earlier, in a separate speech at London’s Guildhall, not in the Christmas Broadcast. What the Christmas message did do was confirm, in the Queen’s own more measured words, that it really had been that kind of year. 1992 also broke with tradition in a more practical way: the broadcast was filmed away from Sandringham for the first time, and production rights were shared between the BBC and ITN rather than sitting with the BBC alone.
2020: a broadcast built around a pandemic
The Queen’s 2020 Christmas message was reshaped almost entirely by the year it was reflecting on. She spoke directly about people of every religion having been unable to gather as they would have wished for their own festivals, naming Passover, Easter, Eid and Vaisakhi specifically, adding simply that “we need life to go on.” The broadcast wove in footage from across the year, including the story of Captain Sir Tom Moore, the war veteran who raised nearly £40 million for NHS charities by walking laps of his garden ahead of his hundredth birthday.
It followed an earlier, genuinely rare broadcast that April, only the fifth non-Christmas television address of her reign, in which she closed with the now-famous line “we will meet again,” borrowed from the wartime song and delivered with the same instinct for reassurance she’d shown as a fourteen-year-old on Children’s Hour eighty years earlier.
A tradition that changes to survive
Across nearly a century, the Christmas Broadcast has moved from a formal, scripted radio address to something far more personal: spoken plainly, filmed informally, often reflecting directly on hardship the country has just lived through. That flexibility, more than any single broadcast, is what has kept the tradition relevant across such enormous social change.
Every monarch has used it slightly differently. What hasn’t changed is the basic idea: one moment a year when the whole country, whatever else divides it, listens to the same voice.
King Charles III’s broadcasts
Since his accession, King Charles III has continued the tradition from Sandringham, in the same broad spirit of reflection his mother and great-grandfather established. A new monarch’s first Christmas Broadcast is always watched a little more closely than most, a visible marker of transition inside a tradition that otherwise barely changes shape year to year.
That continuity is part of what makes the broadcast matter. Nearly a hundred years after George V first spoke into a wireless microphone at Sandringham, the format is recognisably the same ritual, just carried by a different voice.
Why these particular broadcasts still get replayed
What connects 1940, 1957, 1991, 1992 and 2020 isn’t length or production value. It’s that each one changed the broadcast’s own rules, or extended its spirit into a new kind of crisis: 1940 proved a very young royal could steady a frightened public before she ever held the crown; 1957 changed what viewers could see; 1991 changed how the message was put together; 1992 changed how much a monarch would actually admit; 2020 proved the format could still speak directly to an entire country living through something none of them had faced before.
That’s usually what makes a broadcast worth remembering decades later: not the occasion itself, but the moment it quietly rewrote what the tradition was allowed to do next. Browse more of our Royal Places & Events stories for the traditions that have shaped the modern monarchy.
Frequently asked questions
When was the first royal Christmas Broadcast?
The first royal Christmas Broadcast was delivered by King George V on Christmas Day 1932, broadcast live over radio from Sandringham House and written by Rudyard Kipling.
Did Queen Elizabeth II broadcast to the nation before she became Queen?
Yes. As a fourteen-year-old princess, she gave a wartime radio address to Commonwealth children on the BBC’s Children’s Hour on 13 October 1940, joined at the end by her younger sister, Princess Margaret.
When was the first televised Christmas Broadcast?
Queen Elizabeth II delivered the first televised Christmas Broadcast in 1957, drawing 16.5 million UK television viewers and 9.5 million radio listeners, exactly twenty-five years after her grandfather’s original 1932 broadcast.
Did the Queen say “annus horribilis” in her Christmas Broadcast?
No. The phrase “annus horribilis” was coined in a separate speech at London’s Guildhall in November 1992. The Christmas Broadcast that year referenced the same difficult year in different words, saying 1992 was “not a year on which I shall look back with undiluted pleasure.”
What made the 2020 Christmas Broadcast significant?
It directly addressed the COVID-19 pandemic, acknowledged people of multiple faiths unable to celebrate their own festivals as normal, and featured Captain Sir Tom Moore’s fundraising walk, following an earlier rare April 2020 broadcast that closed with “we will meet again.”
Does King Charles III still give a Christmas Broadcast?
Yes. King Charles III continues the tradition established in 1932, delivering his own Christmas message from Sandringham each year.
Details of the Christmas Broadcast tradition are drawn from royal.uk, contemporary news coverage, and widely published historical accounts; described as of 2026.
