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the day... We think of all you have done
to make the Commonwealth such an
important force for good. You continue to
make history.”
Charles also referred to the late Duke
of Edinburgh, who died in April last year
aged 99: “Your ‘strength and stay’ is
much missed this evening, but I am sure
he is here in spirit. My Papa would have
enjoyed the show and joined us whole-
heartedly in celebrating all you continue
to do for your country and your people.”
The pictures projected on to the pal-
ace as Charles spoke included the
Queen’s carriage ride with Nelson Man-
dela down The Mall in 1996 during his
state visit to the UK as South Africa’s pres-
ident. The Queen’s historic handshake
with Martin McGuinness, the former dep-
uty first minister and IRA commander —
part of her visit to Northern Ireland dur-
ing her Diamond Jubilee in 2012 — was
also shown.
Charles praised the Queen for having
“been with us in our difficult times”
against an image of her “we will meet
again” address to the nation at the outset
of the pandemic in 2020. He also spoke of
the importance of the sovereign “bring-
ing us together to celebrate moments of
pride, joy and happiness”, as the crowd
saw a picture of the Queen presenting the
England football captain Bobby Moore
with the World Cup trophy in 1966. There
was, said Charles, “still time for fun
amongst the work”.
While the Queen missed the Epsom
Derby yesterday, watching the meetingon television instead, Charles joked: “We
might have been celebrating that Derby
winner this evening... next year per-
haps?”
To more loud cheers, Charles told the
audience at the palace and those watch-
ing remotely: “I know what really gets my
mother up in the morning is all of you,
watching at home.
“You have met us and talked to us. You
laugh and cry with us and, most impor-
tantly, you have been there for us, for
these 70 years. You pledged to serve your
whole life — you continue to deliver. That
is why we are here. That is what we cele-
brate tonight. These pictures on your
house are the story of your life — and
ours. So, your Majesty, that is why we all
say thank you.”
He ended his tribute by calling for
“three cheers for Her Majesty”.
Earlier in the evening, Prince William,
39, an ardent environmentalist, used his
tribute to hail his grandmother’s calls
over the years to protect the planet and
spoke of his “pride” that “my grandfather
and my father have been part of those
efforts”. Sir David Attenborough also
gave a tribute praising the royal family’s
commitment to conservationism.
Before William appeared on stage, the
German composer Hans Zimmer and an
orchestra performed a specially
arranged version of the Planet Earth II
Suite, followed by a performance by the
Royal Ballet, as words from the Queen’s
1989 Christmas message, focusing on the
environment, were broadcast: “TheThe Prince of Wales and the Duke of Cam-
bridge have paid deeply personal trib-
utes to the Queen for her Platinum Jubi-
lee, with Prince Charles describing the
monarch as the “mother” of the nation
who “continues to make history”.
Addressing the Queen as “Your Maj-
esty, Mummy”, Prince Charles, 73, said
he spoke “on behalf of us all” in his trib-
ute last night, hailing the monarch’s “life-
time of selfless service” and leadership
during the Platinum Party at the Palace, a
concert televised by the BBC.
Taking to the stage in front of Bucking-
ham Palace, which was illuminated with
images of the Queen personally chosen
by Charles, the prince was cheered by a
crowd of more than 20,000 as he
addressed his mother, who was watching
on television from Windsor Castle.
“Your family now spans four genera-
tions. You are our head of state. And you
are also our mother... Looking back, we
think of the countless state occasions that
are milestones along this nation’s road.
And you will think of red boxes, filled
with government papers, at the end of
Roya Nikkhah Royal Editor
Crowds outside the
palace cheer as the
prince addresses the
Queen, watching on
television at Windsor
future of all life on Earth depends on how
we behave towards one another and how
we treat the plants and animals that share
our world with us. We share the Earth as
human beings. All of us. And together as
the nations of the world will leave it to our
children and children’s children. We
must be kind to it for their sake.”
An excerpt from the Queen’s message
to the Cop26 conference in Glasgow last
year was also played: “None of us under-
estimates the challenge ahead, but his-
tory has shown that when nations come
together in common cause there is
always room for hope.”
Joking that it was “great to see Bucking-
ham Palace turned into an Imax screen”,
William said: “While no one’s grand-
mother thanks them for talking about
their age, my own grandmother has been
alive for nearly a century. In that time,
mankind has benefited from unimagina-
ble technological developments and sci-
entific breakthroughs. And although
those breakthroughs have increased our
awareness of the impact humans have on
our world, our planet has become more
fragile. Today, in 2022 — as the Queen cel-
ebrates her Platinum Jubilee — the press-
ing need to protect and restore our planet
has never been more urgent. But like her,
I am an optimist.”
He added: “ Together, if we harness the
very best of humankind and restore our
planet, we will protect it for our children,
for our grandchildren and for future gen-
erations to come. They will be able to say
— with pride at what’s been achieved —‘what a wonderful world’.” William’s trib-
ute was followed by the singer Celeste
performing a special version of What a
Wonderful World with Zimmer.
The concert included performances
by the band Queen playing We Will Rock
Yo u, Sir Rod Stewart, Duran Duran, Alicia
Keys and Sir Elton John, whose tribute to
the monarch was a performance of Your
Song, which includes the lyric “how won-
derful life is while you’re in the world”.
Much of the Queen’s family was in the
royal box to the side of four stages built
outside the palace. They included the
Duchess of Cornwall, the Duchess of
Cambridge, the Earl and Countess of
Wessex and their children Lady Louise
Windsor and James, Viscount Severn, the
Princess Royal and Sir Tim Laurence.
Also present were the Queen’s grand-
daughters, Princesses Beatrice and Euge-
nie and Zara Tindall, with their husbands
Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi, Jack Brooksbank
and Mike Tindall, and her grandson Peter
Phillips with his daughters Savannah and
Isla. The Duke and Duchess of Gloucester
and Prince and Princess Michael of Kent
also attended. Notably absent were the
Duke and Duchess of Sussex.
It is believed that Harry and Meghan
watched the concert from their Windsor
home, Frogmore Cottage, where it is
thought they held a birthday party earlier
in the day for their daughter, Lilibet, who
has turned one and is thought to have
met her great-grandmother for the first
time last week.
@RoyaNikkhahCharles: Thank you from all of us
Fencey that,
the Queen’s
English has
got less posh
increasing contact with non-
U-RP speakers, some of the
mainstream or middle-class
attributes of RP would rub off
on her.
One theory is that the
Queen’s accent has changed
because she wanted to sound
like one of the people. This
explanation can’t be quite
right. The changes to the
Queen’s Christmas
broadcasts from year to year
are so small that they are
below the level of
consciousness.
In an increasingly mobile
and thoroughly mixed
population, any effort to stop
accents changing — whether
the Queen’s or those of her
subjects — would be about as
effective as trying to stop
oneself ageing.
Jonathan Harrington is
professor of phonetics and
speech processing at the
Ludwig Maximilian University
of Munichslightly towards what is
known as mainstream RP,
which is more typical of the
middle classes and of the kind
of standard English spoken in
England today. Just like
Snagge’s, the Queen’s 1950s
vowels in “sad” or “happy”
are much closer to the one in
“red” than they are in her
1980s broadcasts.
What are the causes of
these changes? One of them is
undoubtedly social. England
in the 1950s was more socially
stratified than it is today. The
1960s and 1970s brought an
increasing rise of the lower-
middle and middle classes
into positions of power,
which meant the Queen came
into increasing contact with
non-U-RP speakers. Research
in the phonetic sciences in
the past 20 years has shown
that we tend to imitate our
interlocutors in body
movements, gestures and
speech. Inevitably, then, if
the Queen came intoThe Cambridges watch a rehearsal for
Cardiff’s jubilee concert. Princess
Anne joined racegoers for the Derby
at Epsom, where an animal rights
protester leapt onto the track and the
Queen’s jockeys, past and present —
including Frankie Dettori, centre front
— assembled for a photocallYo u
have
laughed
and
cried
with usYo u
pledged
to serve
your
whole
lifeJUBILEE
ASHLEY CROWDEN/AFP; LEON NEAL/GETTY IMAGES;JOHN WALTON/PA; ANDREW BOYERS/REUTERS
educated at public boarding
schools, wielded power and
authority and typically
resided in and around the
south of England. It was the
accent of choice of the BBC
when it was founded, and
almost all newsreaders were
RP speakers until well after
the Second World War. That
is why RP is sometimes also
called “BBC English”, a term
that is not quite the same as,
but also not unconnected to,
“the Queen’s English”. This
label has connotations of an
immutable accent that should
be aspired to, and of which
the Queen is supposed to be
the very personification.
But, as we can hear, and as
our more detailed analysis
showed, the Queen’s English
of the 1950s is not the same as
it is now. At the beginning of
her reign the monarch spoke
a more aristocratic form of RP
that is sometimes known as
U-RP, or upper-class RP. Since
then her accent has shiftedacoustically analysed about
2,300 vowels from the
Christmas broadcasts
delivered by the Queen, with
rare exceptions, every year
since 1952. These recordings
were kindly made available
by the BBC with the consent
of Buckingham Palace; they
are perhaps the only
recordings in any language in
which the same person
delivers a message with the
same communicative
purpose from year to year
and in similar conditions —
thereby allowing us to
measure the very subtle
influences of “sound change”
over the decades.
The spoken accent of the
Queen — and of Snagge,
Christie and Winston
Churchill — is known as
received pronunciation, or
RP. This was — and to a small
extent remains — the
standard English accent that
came to be associated with
social classes that had beenWhen you hear the old clips
and footage that have been
aired as part of the
celebrations of the Queen’s
Platinum Jubilee, it’s striking
how strange and remote —
and frightfully, frightfully
posh — the Queen’s voice
from the 1950s sounds
compared with today. The
Queen’s speech has become
more “common” over the
decades, but then so has that
of many of us.
How many people today
still sound like John Snagge,
the wartime BBC
newsreader? In his opening
lines to the radio version of
Dad’s Army, his vowel in
“Dad” sounds a bit like the
one in “dead”. When, in an
interview recorded in 1955,
Agatha Christie says “fancy”,
our modern ears hear
“fencey”.
At the end of the 1990s I
led a team of researchers thatJonathan HarringtonThe Queen
delivering her
Christmas Day
speech in 1957Banca do Antfer
Telegram: https://t.me/bancadoantfer
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