Milestone reached to create new home for V-bomber
THE Queen’s message to the Commonwealth on Christmas Day will mark a significant Royal milestone. It was exactly 60 years ago that the BBC outside broadcast unit pulled up at Sandringham for the first time.
The crew might have confessed to nerves as they hauled the three Marconi MkIII TV cameras out of the van, but no-one was more worried than the star of the show.
The Queen had been speaking to the nation at Christmas since the beginning of her reign, five years earlier. But her 1957 message was the first to be televised – and since it predated videotape, it had to be delivered live.
At exactly 3pm, viewers to both TV channels heard the National Anthem as the first camera panned across the sweeping Sandringham exterior and closed in on the window of the Long Library. Inside, the Queen, wearing pearls and a gown whose colour the audience could only guess, was seated at an antique desk, surrounded by cards.
Her seven-and-a-half-minute “talk”, as the papers called it, was written on a teleprompter and on notes at her side, but she did not seem entirely at home with the technology.
She had agreed to a televised broadcast in response to criticism from Lord Altrincham, the writer John Grigg, in his journal the
She acknowledged as much in her speech. “It is inevitable that I should seem a rather remote figure to many of you,” she said.
The Queen went on to rebut his suggestion that the monarchy might seem outdated in the face of advancements such as TV.
“It is not the new inventions which are the difficulty,” she said. “The trouble is caused by unthinking people who carelessly throw away ageless ideals as if they were old and outworn machinery. They would have religion thrown aside, morality in personal and public life made meaningless, honesty counted as foolishness and self-interest set up in place of self-restraint.”
The broadcast, a primitive “telerecording” of which survives, was itself an anniversary – 25 years since the first Royal address on radio by the Queen’s grandfather, George V.
Over the years, the 3pm speech has become a staple of the British Christmas, rivalled in the 1970s only by
From the outset, it has been screened simultaneously on all the main channels. ITV made the Queen its cover star on the Christmas edition of in 1957, and sandwiched her first broadcast respectfully between an hour of music from the light orchestral conductor Mantovani and a Merle Oberon film.
The monarch is said to have taken a personal interest in each year’s speech, one of the few in which she expresses a personal view of world events, rather than speaking on Government advice.
She has often returned to the theme of changing technology, remarking in 1983 that “computers cannot generate compassion”.
However, her best-remembered speech, in which she referred to 1992 as her “annus horribilis”, was not delivered at Christmas but a month earlier, at London’s Guildhall during an event to mark the 40th anniversary of her accession.
That year, Prince Andrew and the Duchess of York had separated, Princess Anne had divorced, Prince Charles was revealed to have been conducting an affair with Camilla Parker-Bowles and Princess Diana’s unhappy life had been chronicled in a book.
On top of all that, a fire had destroyed part of Windsor Castle.
The Queen chose not to mention any of that on Christmas Day, saying instead that the death that July of the war hero and philanthropist Leonard Cheshire “helped me put my own worries into perspective”. PLANS FOR a Doncaster visitor attraction based around what was the last flying Vulcan bomber have reached a ‘major milestone’.
Officials at the Vulcan to the Sky trust, which owns the former cold war jet, have been granted planning permission to create a hangar on a site next to Doncaster Sheffield Airport which was once used as a sewage treatment works.
They say the approval will help them arrange a deal with investors to take the £3m project forward.
Dr Robert Pleming, chief executive of Vulcan to the Sky Trust, the charity that owns and operates Vulcan XH558, said: “I’m absolutely delighted that we now have the planning permission in place.
“In terms of the way forward for us, having the planning permission granted means we are now looking much more positively towards the future.
“We have been working hard towards this and it marks a major milestone in our efforts to establish a permanent presence at the airport.
“It is very welcome news in terms of our raising the £3m that is needed.
“We are not using traditional fundraising methods – we are looking for an investor or consortium of investors to run it as a commercial operation.
“Discussions are ongoing and this news will help.
“The timescale is as soon as possible.
“We want to move ahead. The actual building process is expected to take 12 months.”
The proposals are to use the aircraft as the centrepiece of a science museum which has been compared with the Eden Centre in Cornwall.
Although the Vulcan will no longer fly, it would be more than a museum piece as it would be taken outside to do powered taxi runs in front of the public, which would mean the famous roar of its jets would still be heard.
The plans also include a shop, cafe, bar, education, conference, office, kitchen area and assembly areas where work would be carried out on the jets.