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| King George V delivering his 1934 Christmas Broadcast. Image from Wikimedia Commons |
In 1932, King George V delivered the first-ever Christmas
broadcast, ten years after BBC’s founding father, John Reight, initially approached him about doing a message on the relatively-new radio. His speech was written by Rudyard Kipling and it focused on
the advances of technology that permitted the King to reach out to his subjects
on all parts of the world. The need for work towards peace and counselling was
also mentioned, urging listeners to aim for "prosperity without
self-seeking."
Here is the complete transcript of the King’s first
Christmas broadcast.
Through one of the marvels of modern Science, I am enabled,
this Christmas Day, to speak to all my peoples throughout the Empire. I take it
as a good omen that Wireless should have reached its present perfection at a
time when the Empire has been linked in closer union. For it offers us immense
possibilities to make that union closer still.
It may be that our future may lay upon us more than one
stern test. Our past will have taught us how to meet it unshaken. For the
present, the work to which we are all equally bound is to arrive at a reasoned
tranquillity within our borders; to regain prosperity without self-seeking; and
to carry with us those whom the burden of past years has disheartened or
overborne.
My life's aim has been to serve as I might, towards those
ends. Your loyalty, your confidence in me has been my abundant reward.
I speak now from my home and from my heart to you all. To
men and women so cut off by the snows, the desert or the sea, that only voices
out of the air can reach them; to those cut off from fuller life by blindness,
sickness, or infirmity; and to those who are celebrating this day with their
children and grand-children. To all—to each—I wish a Happy Christmas. God Bless
You!
Watch:
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