George V
All William and Kate’s children to be Princes and Princesses
On 9 January, the 31st birthday of the pregnant Duchess of Cambridge, it was announced from Buckingham Palace that the Queen had issued Letters Patent on 31 December 2012, extending the number of members of the royal family entitled to the style of Royal Highness and the prefix Prince or Princess. This change is very specific, affecting only the children of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, and is consistent with the new legislation introducing equal primogeniture.
The Queen’s Christmas Broadcast
The tradition of the Christmas broadcast by the British sovereign started 80 years ago in 1932, when John Reith, Director General of the BBC, persuaded George V to make a Christmas Day broadcast to the people of the Empire via the new BBC Empire Service (precursor to the BBC World Service). Although George V was famously conservative and suspicious of anything new, he saw the advantage of being able to speak directly to his people around the world.
Prologue and Epilogue of World War I
Today, 28 June, is the anniversary of two major events of World War I, the assassination in Sarajevo of the heir to the Austrian throne on 28 June 1914, which set off a cascade of events that led to the start of the war, and the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in France on 28 June 1919, which marked the official return to peace.