"husband's death and retired to Scotland. However, after a meeting with the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, she broke her retirement and resumed her public duties. Eventually she became just as busy as queen mother as she had been as queen consort. In July 1953, she undertook her first overseas visit since the funeral when she visited the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland with Princess Margaret. She laid the foundation stone of the University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland – the current University of Zimbabwe. Upon her return to the region in 1957, Elizabeth was inaugurated as the College's President, and"
"Royal Christmas Message The Queen's Christmas Message (also known as The King's Christmas Message in the reign of a male monarch, formally as Her Majesty's Most Gracious Speech) is a broadcast made by the sovereign of the Commonwealth realms to the Commonwealth of Nations each Christmas. The tradition began in 1932 with a radio broadcast by King George V on the British Broadcasting Corporation's Empire Service. Since 1952, the message has been read by Elizabeth II; today, it is broadcast on television, radio, and the Internet via various providers. The idea for a Christmas message from the sovereign to the"
"Soviet Union. Royal Christmas Message The Queen's Christmas Message (also known as The King's Christmas Message in the reign of a male monarch, formally as Her Majesty's Most Gracious Speech) is a broadcast made by the sovereign of the Commonwealth realms to the Commonwealth of Nations each Christmas. The tradition began in 1932 with a radio broadcast by King George V on the British Broadcasting Corporation's Empire Service. Since 1952, the message has been read by Elizabeth II; today, it is broadcast on television, radio, and the Internet via various providers. The idea for a Christmas message from the sovereign"
"bond tying the Commonwealth together. George's daughter, Elizabeth II, gave her first Christmas message to the Commonwealth of Nations from her study at Sandringham House, at 3:07 PM on 25 December 1952, some 11 months after her father's death. By 1957, the broadcast became televised, and, from then until 1996, was produced by the BBC; only in 1969 was no message given because a special documentary film, ""Royal Family"", had been made during the summer in connection with the investiture of the Prince of Wales. It was therefore decided not to do a broadcast at Christmas, but the Queen issued"
"attended many cultural events as part of her public role. She has given an annual Christmas message to the Commonwealth every year, apart from 1969, since she became Queen. The Queen's first television message was aired on Christmas Day 1957. In 2001, the Royal Christmas Message was webcast on the royal website for the first time and, in 2006, it was made available as a podcast. Her first appearance on live television in Canada was in Prescott, Ontario, in 1959 when, as Queen of Canada, she opened the Saint Lawrence Seaway. The Queen has never done a press interview. In"
"gentlemen go into their countries, you bring them all to kiss my hand.' "" "" Golden Speech The Golden Speech was delivered by Queen Elizabeth I of England in the Palace Council Chamber to 141 Members of the Commons (including the Speaker), on 30 November 1601. It was a speech that was expected to be addressing some pricing concerns, based on the recent economic issues facing the country. Surprisingly, she revealed that it would be her final Parliament and turned the mode of the speech to addressing the love and respect she had for the country, her position, and the"
"Golden Speech The Golden Speech was delivered by Queen Elizabeth I of England in the Palace Council Chamber to 141 Members of the Commons (including the Speaker), on 30 November 1601. It was a speech that was expected to be addressing some pricing concerns, based on the recent economic issues facing the country. Surprisingly, she revealed that it would be her final Parliament and turned the mode of the speech to addressing the love and respect she had for the country, her position, and the Members themselves. It is the second such speech for which Queen Elizabeth I was noted,"
"1957. She was 81 years old. She never married. Elizabeth the Queen Consort made her husband George VI aware of an obscure poem. He included the poem's preamble in his Christmas 1939 BBC Radio broadcast to the British Empire. The opening words of the poem ""The Gate of the Year"" struck a chord with a country facing the uncertainty of war. These words were from Haskin's poem ""God Knows"" written in 1908 and expanded in 1912. However, she was not named as author by the King and no one was able to identify the poet at the time. Finally at"
"Christmas Eve National Speech The Christmas Eve National Speech () is a broadcast by the reigning King of Spain to Spain every Christmas since 1975. The speech is aired on all Spanish TV channels. During his reign, King Juan Carlos I usually covered the main problems of the nation, such as ETA. In 2004, the speech was highly related to the 11 March 2004 Madrid train bombings; in 2006 the King discussed the need to become a united nation against terrorism (in implicit support of Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero's anti-terrorist policies) and he mentioned the increasing force of"
"meant ""intoxicated"" – Queen Elizabeth II is said to prefer ""happy Christmas"" for this reason. In her annual Christmas messages to the Commonwealth, Queen Elizabeth has used ""happy Christmas"" far more often than ""merry Christmas."" Note: ""merry Christmas"" has been used only four times: in 1962, 1967, 1970 and 1999. ""Happy Christmas"" has been used on almost every broadcast since 1956. One year included both greetings, and ""blessed Christmas"" was used in 1954 and 2007) In the American poet Clement Moore's ""A Visit from St. Nicholas"" (1823), the final line, originally written as ""Happy Christmas to all, and to all"
"reduction from five sessions to three. The Christmas Lectures were first televised in 1936 on the BBC's fledgling Television Service. They were broadcast on BBC Two from 1966–1999 and Channel 4 from 2000–2004. In 2000 one of the lectures was broadcast live for the first time. Following the end of Channel 4's contract to broadcast the lectures, there were concerns that they might simply be dropped from scheduling as the channel was negotiating with the Royal Institution over potential changes to the format, while the BBC announced that ""The BBC will not show the lectures again, because it feels the"
"are ""We Wish You a Merry Christmas"", '""O Come All Ye Faithful"", ""The First Noel"", ""God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen"", ""The Holly and the Ivy"", ""I Saw Three Ships"", ""Deck the Halls"", ""In the Bleak Midwinter"", ""Joy to the World"", ""Once in Royal David's City"", ""Hark! The Herald Angels Sing"", ""What Child Is This?"", ""Good King Wenceslas"", ""Here We Come A-Caroling"" and ""While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks"". A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols held in King's College Chapel, Cambridge was introduced in 1918 and first broadcast on the BBC in 1928. The service is broadcast around the world. The"
"News recorded the Queen's Christmas message for Christmas 2012, the Queen's Diamond Jubilee year, and for the first time it has been recorded in 3D. Buckingham Palace are reported to have explained: ""We wanted to do something a bit different and special in this Jubilee year, so doing it for the first time in 3D seemed a good thing, technology wise, to do."" The themes and direction of the speech are decided by the Queen and the text is largely written by the Queen herself, sometimes with assistance by Prince Philip and her staff. In recent years, the speech has"
"Royal Institution Christmas Lectures The Royal Institution Christmas Lectures are a series of lectures on a single topic each, which have been held at the Royal Institution in London each year since 1825, missing 1939–42 because of the Second World War. The lectures present scientific subjects to a general audience, including young people, in an informative and entertaining manner. Michael Faraday initiated the first Christmas Lecture series in 1825. This came at a time when organised education for young people was scarce. Faraday presented a total of nineteen series in all. The Royal Institution's Christmas Lectures were first held in"
"an axe to an oak tree dedicated to Thor and pointed out a fir tree, which he stated was a more fitting object of reverence because it pointed to heaven and it had a triangular shape, which he said was symbolic of the Trinity. The English language phrase ""Christmas tree"" is first recorded in 1835 and represents an importation from the German language. From Germany the custom was introduced to Britain, first via Queen Charlotte, wife of George III, and then more successfully by Prince Albert during the reign of Queen Victoria. By 1841 the Christmas tree had become even"
"the same artist and company, is usually broadcast around the same time. Adaptations of novels from Charles Dickens are also common around Christmas time. Along with ""A Christmas Carol"" (the most popular due to its Christmas season setting, and the message portrayed), such as ""Bleak House"" (2005), ""Oliver Twist"" (2007) and ""Great Expectations"" (2011), among others. These adaptations usually featured all-star casts. Christmas Day begins at 12 at night with the showing of Midnight Mass on the BBC. In addition, HM Queen Elizabeth II annually broadcasts a 10-minute speech on Christmas Day at 3 p.m., charting her views of the"
"immigrants in Spain and appreciated their contribution to the economy. Christmas Eve National Speech The Christmas Eve National Speech () is a broadcast by the reigning King of Spain to Spain every Christmas since 1975. The speech is aired on all Spanish TV channels. During his reign, King Juan Carlos I usually covered the main problems of the nation, such as ETA. In 2004, the speech was highly related to the 11 March 2004 Madrid train bombings; in 2006 the King discussed the need to become a united nation against terrorism (in implicit support of Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez"
"triangular shape, which he said was symbolic of the Trinity. However, the English-language phrase ""Christmas tree"" is first recorded in 1835 and represents an importation from the German language. From Germany the custom was introduced to England, first via Queen Charlotte, wife of George III, and then more successfully by Prince Albert during the early reign of Queen Victoria. The influential 1840s image of the Queen's decorated evergreen was republished in the U.S, and as the first widely circulated picture of a decorated Christmas tree in America, the custom there spread. Christmas trees may be decorated with lights and ornaments."
"Poetry"" on 19 and 25 December 2010. In December 2015 she was featured in the BBC One television documentary ""Cue the Queen: Celebrating the Christmas Speech"". The poem has been set to music by Canadian composer Eleanor Joanne Daley. Haskins was English and a British citizen, yet various sources have erroneously reported that she was either American or Canadian. Minnie Louise Haskins Minnie Louise Haskins (12 May 1875 – 3 February 1957) was a British poet and an academic in the field of sociology, best known for being quoted by King George VI in his Royal Christmas Message of 1939."
"with Christmas. The East Sussex cook Eliza Acton was the first to refer to it as ""Christmas Pudding"" in her bestselling 1845 book ""Modern Cookery for Private Families"". The pudding ""had the great merit"" of not needing to be cooked in an oven, something ""most lower class households did not have"". Throughout the colonial period, the pudding was a symbol of unity throughout the British Empire. In 1927, the Empire Marketing Board (EMB) wrote a letter to the Master of the Royal Household, requesting a copy of the recipe used to make the Christmas pudding for the royal family. The"
"Alternative Christmas message The alternative Christmas message is a message broadcast by Channel 4 since 1993, as a sometimes humorous and sometimes serious alternative to the Royal Christmas Message of Queen Elizabeth II. Since 1993, Channel 4 has broadcast an ""alternative Christmas message"" usually featuring a contemporary, often controversial celebrity, delivering a message in the manner of Her Majesty. This tradition started by accident when, running a series of programmes on 'Christmas in New York', the channel invited Quentin Crisp to give an alternative message – playing on the pejorative term 'queen' meaning a very feminine male homosexual. In contrast"
"and Sackville before departing the province. In Toronto, she took in a Toronto Maple Leafs game at Maple Leaf Gardens and greeted Ontarians at numerous official functions. Aside from a brief stop-over for refuelling in Gander, Newfoundland in 1953 during which the Queen decided, after being roused from sleep at 3:20 am by their singing of ""For She's a Jolly Good Fellow"", to address the crowd gathered outside, Elizabeth returned to Canada in 1957, there giving her first ever live television address, appointing her husband to her Canadian Privy Council at a meeting which she chaired, and on 14 October,"
"by the Hanoverians. Queen Victoria as a child made note of it in her diary for Christmas Eve 1832; the delighted 13-year-old princess wrote, ""After dinner ... we then went into the drawing-room near the dining-room ... There were two large round tables on which were placed two trees hung with lights and sugar ornaments. All the presents being placed round the trees.."". Since the first commercial Christmas card was produced in London in 1843, cards are sent in the weeks leading up to Christmas, many of which contain the English festive greeting ""Merry Christmas"". On Christmas Day, a public"
"symbolic of Scrooge's change of heart. The revival of the Christmas Carol began with William Sandys's ""Christmas Carols Ancient and Modern"" (1833), with the first appearance in print of ""The First Noel"", ""I Saw Three Ships"", ""Hark the Herald Angels Sing"" and ""God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen"". In 1843 the first commercial Christmas card was produced by Henry Cole, leading to the exchange of festive greeting cards among the public. The movement coincided with the appearance of the Oxford Movement and the growth of Anglo-Catholicism, which led a revival in traditional rituals and religious observances. In the UK, the Christmas"
"In October 1951, Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh went on a month-long tour of Canada; the trip had been delayed for a week due to the King's illness. At the State Opening of Parliament in November, the King's speech from the throne was read for him by the Lord Chancellor, Lord Simonds. His Christmas broadcast of 1951 was recorded in sections, and then edited together. On 31 January 1952, despite advice from those close to him, the King went to London Airport to see off Princess Elizabeth, who was going on her tour of Australia via Kenya. On"
"of the next five years. At Windsor, the princesses staged pantomimes at Christmas in aid of the Queen's Wool Fund, which bought yarn to knit into military garments. In 1940, the 14-year-old Elizabeth made her first radio broadcast during the BBC's ""Children's Hour"", addressing other children who had been evacuated from the cities. She stated: ""We are trying to do all we can to help our gallant sailors, soldiers and airmen, and we are trying, too, to bear our share of the danger and sadness of war. We know, every one of us, that in the end all will be"
"woman giving the speech was a particularly controversial one due to the media attention that the niqab has received in the UK in 2006. With regards to the decision, Channel 4 said that it was fitting that the ""alternative Christmas message should be given by a Muslim woman in a year when issues of religious and racial identity and freedom of expression have dominated the news agenda."" The address went out at 3 pm, the same time as the Queen's speech on BBC1 and ITV1. Ravat had stated that she would not be watching her own broadcast in favour of"
"Princess Mary Christmas gift box The Princess Mary Christmas gift box was a brass or silver tin containing a number of gifts intended to be distributed to all members of the armed forces of the British Empire on Christmas day 1914, during World War I. Following the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914, the British Expeditionary Force was sent to the Western Front and was soon joined by troops from the Empire, those from India arriving before the end of the year. In October 1914, George V's 17-year-old daughter, Mary, Princess Royal, launched an appeal to fund"
"British Empire was first proposed by the ""founding father"" of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), John Reith, in 1922 when he approached King George V about making a short broadcast on the newly created radio service. The King declined, however, believing that radio was mainly an entertainment. Reith approached the King again ten years later, in 1932, as a way to inaugurate the Empire Service (now the World Service) and the King finally agreed after being encouraged to do so by Queen Mary and Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald. That year, George V read the first Royal Christmas Message; the King"
"began in 1933 with Dookie, the first corgi owned by her family. Scenes of a relaxed, informal home life have occasionally been witnessed; she and her family, from time to time, prepare a meal together and do the washing up afterwards. In the 1950s, as a young woman at the start of her reign, Elizabeth was depicted as a glamorous ""fairytale Queen"". After the trauma of the Second World War, it was a time of hope, a period of progress and achievement heralding a ""new Elizabethan age"". Lord Altrincham's accusation in 1957 that her speeches sounded like those of a"
"On 24 November 1998, in opening the second session of Parliament, the Queen delivered her annual Speech from the Throne; the Speech is written for her by the ruling party and outlines that party's legislative agenda for the forthcoming year. In it, she suggested that her Government (i.e. the ruling Labour Party) would pursue a reform of the House of Lords. These remarks were followed by shouts of ""Hear! Hear!"" from supportive Labour Members of Parliament, and by similar shouts of ""Shame! Shame!"" from Conservative peers; such outbursts were unprecedented, for the Queen's Speech is with few exceptions heard by"
"they visited Aden, Kenya, Uganda, and Sudan, but Egypt was avoided because of political tensions. Albert had a stammer, which affected his ability to deliver speeches, and after October 1925, Elizabeth assisted in helping him through the therapy devised by Lionel Logue, an episode portrayed in the 2010 film ""The King's Speech"". In 1926, the couple had their first child, Princess Elizabeth—""Lilibet"" to the family—who would later become Queen Elizabeth II. Another daughter, Princess Margaret Rose, was born four years later. Albert and Elizabeth, without their child, travelled to Australia to open Parliament House in Canberra in 1927. She was,"
"Scrooge became a synonym for miser, with ""Bah! Humbug!"" dismissive of the festive spirit. In 1843, the first commercial Christmas card was produced by Sir Henry Cole. The revival of the Christmas Carol began with William Sandys's ""Christmas Carols Ancient and Modern"" (1833), with the first appearance in print of ""The First Noel"", ""I Saw Three Ships"", ""Hark the Herald Angels Sing"" and ""God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen"", popularized in Dickens' ""A Christmas Carol"". In Britain, the Christmas tree was introduced in the early 19th century following the personal union with the Kingdom of Hanover by Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, wife"