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➜ CHUR 5/51A-C (images 454-460)
We have had a day which we will all remember. It is my honour to round the day off. You have heard Prime Ministers of the Empire and Commonwealth pay tributes to you.
Now as night falls the new Queen herself will speak to you. The age of chivalry is not dead. Here is a Lady we respect because she is our Queen and we love because of the person she is.
It is our dearest hope that the Queen will be happy and that her reign will be glorious.
We pray for rulers who serve their country and for the people to prosper free from fear.
May God grant us these blessings.
The Queen.
Prime Ministers Broadcast on Coronation Night 2.6.53
The Queen’s Coronation Broadcast Introduction [2 June 1953 → (this part is handwritten, the first title has been crossed out)
We have had a day
which the oldest are proud to have lived to see
and the youngest will remember all their lives.
It is my duty and honour
to lead you to its culmination.
You have heard Prime Ministers
of the Empire and Commonwealth
pay their moving tributes
on behalf of the famous states and races for whom they speak.
The splendours of this 2nd of June
glow in our minds.
Now as night falls
you will hear the voice
of our Sovereign herself,
crowned in our history
and enthroned for ever in our hearts.
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Let it not be thought
that the age of chivalry belongs to the past.
Here at the summit of our world wide community
is a Lady whom we respect because she is our Queen
and whom we love because she is herself.
'Gracious' and 'noble' are words familiar to us all
in courtly phrasing.
Tonight they have a new ring in them
because we know they are true
about the gleaming figure whom Providence
has brought to us –
and brought to us
in times where the present is hard
and the future veiled.
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It is our dearest hope
that The Queen will be happy
and our resolve – unswerving –
that her reign shall be as glorious
as her devoted subjects can help her to make it.
We pray to have rulers who serve,
for nations who comfort each other,
and for peoples who thrive and prosper –
free from fear.
May God grant us these blessings.
The Queen.
These are the typescript notes which Churchill used to introduce the Coronation broadcast of Queen Elizabeth II on 2 June 1953.
As Prime Minister in 1952 on the death of King George VI, Winston Churchill played a prominent role in the coronation of the new Queen, Elizabeth II, the following year.
Additional information
The speech notes are typewritten with some changes written in by hand by Churchill. These are the final draft of the notes which Churchill would have used when actually making the broadcast. Churchill’s secretaries were trained to set out the words on the page as you see here – like poetry or blank verse. They called this ‘psalm form’. If you try and read the words aloud, the layout on the page might help you get a sense of the pace and rhythm of the speech. However, the main reason for the layout was that it made it easy for Churchill to keep his place – perhaps he ran a finger down the page as he spoke and could glance down for a reminder of where he was in the speech.
After this set of notes, there is an earlier draft of the speech in the file. Changes have been made here but the layout is also different.
Remember we are hoping this source can be useful to us in whether Churchill was a good orator. Sources usually help historians in two ways:
Tick if this is present | If you have put a tick, what makes you think this? | On a scale of 0-5 (0 being absent and 5 being strongly represented), indicate how important this attribute is to the speech. | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Correctness of Diction Is it clear what Churchill means even if some words are unfamiliar? | |||
| Rhythm Does his speech seem like blank verse poetry? | |||
| Accumulation of Argument Does he build his argument? | |||
| Analogy Does he use examples from the past or from people’s knowledge to illustrate his point? | |||
| Emotions of the speaker and the audience aroused Do the audience know Churchill’s final point before he gets there? |
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