The Royal Broadcasts
BBC
BBC · 1935–1953
Broadcasts
10
Cadence
Fortnightly
Rated
PG
Since
1935
The run
- Network
- BBC
- Years active
- 1935–1953
- Surviving broadcasts
- 10
- Genre
- docudrama
Period pressings of royal broadcasts issued on 78rpm disc: King George VI's Empire Day address of 24 May 1940, "The King to his People" from 1939 and 1951, the Silver Jubilee thanksgiving service of 1935, Princess Elizabeth's 1940 message to the children of the Empire and her 21st-birthday broadcast from Cape Town in 1947, and Queen Elizabeth II speaking on the evening of her coronation, 2 June 1953.
Source collection
Internet Archive audio collections
Rights
Public domain — no renewed US copyright
Cataloguing
Air dates and notes from the Archive item record
The shape of the run
What survives, year by year
3 dated broadcasts across 92 years on the air, with 91 years where nothing is known to survive. Brightness is transfer quality; empty cells are months lost to time.
Episodes
Start here
Listen to the run in order
Restored broadcasts from 2026, in original transmission order.
- 1. Sign Off · 2 Jun 2026
- 2. Dead Air · 9 Jun 2026
- 3. The Long Silence · 16 Jun 2026
- 01
Dead Air
4 Aug 2026 · 20 min
- 02
Sign Off
28 Jul 2026 · 35 min
- 03
The Case of the Missing Hour
21 Jul 2026 · 50 min
- 04
Night Broadcast
14 Jul 2026 · 1h 5m
A quiet beginning that turns, halfway through, into something else entirely.
- 05
The Last Train Out
7 Jul 2026 · 28 min
- 06
Signal at Midnight
30 Jun 2026 · 43 min
- 07
A Room Above the Street
23 Jun 2026 · 58 min
- 08
The Long Silence
16 Jun 2026 · 21 min
We go back to the beginning and read everything again.
Also on BBC
BBC in 1935–1953
Other series the network carried while The Royal Broadcasts was on the air.
Same seasons
docudrama on the air then
Series in the same genre whose runs overlapped this one.
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