Nowadays, everyone is on YouTube, and now it is the Queen of England who has also resorted to this site. The Queen of England, the 81-year old Queen Elizabeth II has launched her own special Royal Channel on YouTube, the Google-owned video sharing network.
The Queen plans to use YouTube to send out her 50th annual televised Christmas message, which she has been delivering live to England and its colonies since December 25, 1957.
Interestingly, the Buckingham Palace began posting archives and recent footage of the Queen and other royals on the same YouTube channel. The council plans to add new clips on a regular basis.
“The queen always keeps abreast with new ways of communicating with people. The Christmas message was via podcast last year,” Buckingham Palace said in a statement.
“She has always been aware of reaching more people and adapting the communication to suit. This will make the Christmas message more accessible to younger people and those in other countries,” the statement said.
The queen’s YouTube page bears the scarlet lettered heading that reads “The Royal Channel- The Official Channel of the British Monarchy”. Also seen on this page is a photograph of Buckingham Palace flanked by the queen’s Guards in their trademark tall bearskin hats and red tunics.
Some of the recent video clips show shots of garden parties, state visits, The queen herself, the many British prime ministers who have served her reign and a day in the life of Prince Charles, the queen’s son.
The Royal Channel also shows excerpts from Lord Wakehurst’s film “Long to Reign Over Us,” which has never been publicly released. Wakehurst, a member of Parliament who died in 1970, was an avid amateur film maker, charting events such as Queen Elizabeth II’s accession and coronation.
The colour images convey the historical events from the public’s perspective, showing crowds holding street parties and camping out on The Mall — the wide boulevard outside Buckingham Palace — to catch a glimpse of the queen on Coronation Day.
The Royal Channel also includes rarely seen silent news footage of the 1923 wedding of the queen’s parents, then known as the Duke of York and Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon.
Queen Elizabeth II’s annual Christmas speech can once again be downloaded as a podcast from here. It also is being made available on television in high definition for the first time.