Coronation Day across the Globe was first broadcast in 1953, by the Home Service, and until last Sunday, it wasn’t broadcast again. In order to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the cororation, the BBC decided to delve into their archives and re-broadcast it. It might have been the first televised coronation, but the BBC’s radio team were ‘determined to show off what they alone could do’, writes Kate Chisholm in her radio review this week. This determination resulted in messages of goodwill to the Queen sent from places ranging from the Australian outback to the top of Ben Nevis. In 2012, however, the programme seems ‘weirdly outdated’. Nevertheless, says Kate:
‘There was something deeply affecting listening to something that came straight out of another time, as remote to us now as the dinosaurs, yet still within the living memory of people we know.’
This week, if you weren’t watching or listening to a programme about the coronation, it seemed that the only option was The Tudors.
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