Queen Elizabeth on YouTube
No joke:
The Queen has taken a bold stride into cyberspace by launching her own channel on the video-sharing website YouTube. The Royal Channel launches today as Buckingham Palace seeks to promote Britain’s monarch to a youthful global audience.
While aides were utterly convinced it was the way forward, the 81-year-old Queen – who only recently mastered emailing and had never used a personal computer until two years ago – was not immediately acquainted with the YouTube phenomenon. But after the concept was explained to her by, among others, her granddaughters Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie – both avid Facebook fans – she personally approved the channel’s go-ahead after viewing its contents.
Wondering what you can watch?
It is launched with rarely-seen silent newsreel footage of the 1923 wedding of the future George VI to Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, later Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, and historic, albeit grainy, footage from 1917 of Queen Alexandra visiting rose sellers in London’s West End.
Three films made by the late Lord Wakehurst, a former governor of New South Wales and Northern Ireland, which have never before been publicly released, also feature, showing public reaction to the death of George VI, the Queen’s accession and her coronation.
More footage, including recent videos of engagements, investitures and her speeches, will be added regularly with text translated into French, Spanish, German, Italian and Hindi.
I’m wondering what our British readers think of this plan. Personally I’m not a big fan of the Royal Family ‘reaching’ out in such a way. They tend to bring themselves down when they do. On the other hand, this doesn’t really sound like a denigrating thing to do; as I understand it, they’ll simply play videos of speeches, etc., without trying to appear more “common.”
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