To the Queen's Taste

Over the past year, some Britons have said some harsh public things about their Queen. In their opinion, Elizabeth was too "aloof"; her stilted speechmaking was "a pain in the neck." Neither Queen nor court made any reply. Last week the time came for the monarch's Christmas Day broadcast, and for the first time, the speech was televised. It was the Queen's first personal TV appearance in Britain, and she went to great pains to prove her critics wrong.

The Christmas Day broadcasts are firmly lodged in royal tradition, running back to 1932, when George V sat down before a microphone at Sandringham House, and -- though he confessed that it all but spoiled his day -- became the first British monarch to .speak ("from my home and from my heart. . .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 his subjects over the radio. Elizabeth's father George VI insisted on making the broadcast even while wasting away after the removal of a lung, painfully recording a phrase or two at a time in an agonizing ordeal that took two days.

Double Ditches. For his daughter, last week's ordeal was more protracted than painful. Preparations had taken weeks. Two ditches, each two miles long, were gouged through the velvety lawns and underbrush of the 7,000-acre estate to carry the cables needed for TV cameras. The Queen herself watched, over and over, a training film starring bright-eyed, pretty Sylvia Peters, one of BBC's ablest announcers, in which Sylvia demonstrated the five best ways of making a TV speech: 1) from memory, 2) from notes, 3) using a Teleprompter, 4) combining notes and Teleprompter, 5) reading it in its entirety. The Queen selected No. 4. She wrote the speech herself, and her draft was care fully edited to eliminate cliches and pompous phrases.

A makeup artist arrived at Sandringham to advise Elizabeth on such problems as foundation creams, face powder and eye shadow. Homey touches abounded: a shelf behind Elizabeth's chair bristled with Christmas cards; a large photo of nine-year-old Prince Charles and seven-year-old Princess Anne stood at the Queen's elbow. Wearing a brocaded afternoon dress, the Queen was positioned at her oak desk, sitting sideways from it so that she faced directly into the camera and into the eyes of an estimated 50 million viewers in Great Britain and on the Continent.

These Old Islands. The red light flashed and the Queen began her speech: "It is inevitable that I should seem a rather remote figure to you . . . but now, at least for a few minutes, I welcome you to the peace of my home." Many viewers thought she was speaking indirectly to her critics when she added that today ". . . unthinking people . . . carelessly throw away ageless ideals as if they were old and outworn machinery."

The Queen went on: "We need the kind of courage that can withstand the subtle corruption of the cynics so that we can show the world that we're not afraid of the future. . . In the old days the monarch led his soldiers onto the battle field. . . I cannot lead you into battle, I do not give you laws or administer justice, but I can do something else -- I can give you my heart and my devotion to these old islands and to all the peoples of our brotherhood of-nations." She spoke for seven minutes, and her appearance was one of matronly composure, warmed by her famed smile.

Next day most of the papers were in full, ecstatic cry. Headlined the News Chronicle: THE QUEEN'S TV TRIUMPH! Cheered the Daily Sketch: "The Queen knocks those critics cold!" The only faultfinder was Donald Edgar of the Daily Express. Why, asked Edgar, had not someone the sense to tell the Queen that her dress ("It was fussy with that great big bow") was wrong for TV? Why was her makeup so bad?

But the Queen's loyal subjects clearly liked Elizabeth just as she was. Said a cockney cab driver: "I vote Labor every time. But there's nothing like our Queen. No President could talk like that and mean what she means to everyone." A university student was even more choked up: "She really shot back at her critics. After hearing her, my Dad said to me, 'Ruddy good show, that,' and that's just what it was!"

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