21st birthday speech of Princess Elizabeth
On 21 April 1947, Princess Elizabeth, the heir presumptive to the British throne, gave a speech that was broadcast to the British Commonwealth on her 21st birthday. Elizabeth was accompanying her parents, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, on a tour of southern Africa. It was her first overseas tour. Background The speech was broadcast to the "youth of the Empire" and was broadcast on the BBC Home Service in the United Kingdom at 6:55 pm on 21 April 1947, her 21st birthday. Her birthday had been declared a national holiday in South Africa. A description of her birthday celebrations in Cape Town preceded the speech on the Home Service. Elizabeth had spent the morning of her birthday at Government House in Cape Town after an earlier plan to ascend Table Mountain by cable car was abandoned due to inclement weather. Elizabeth then reviewed 7,000 troops and associated South African military personnel at a parade at Youngsfield Military Base in Ottery, Cape Town, that was attended by the South African cabinet. She then attended a rally of South African youth before returning to Government House to broadcast the speech. Elizabeth then attended a firework display in her honour before attending a ball at Government House where she was presented with a diamond necklace by the prime minister of South Africa, Jan Smuts. Content The speech was written by Dermot Morrah, a journalist for The Times, who was accompanying the tour as his newspaper's correspondent. Morrah was asked to write the speech by King George. The initial draft of the speech was almost thrown away by a steward on the Royal Train who was clearing up wine bottles but subsequently found. Morrah subsequently received a letter from Alan Lascelles, the private secretary to the sovereign, who thanked him for the speech and said that the moving passages in the speech had made Elizabeth cry. Morrah never publicly spoke of his authorship of the speech. Lascelles told Morrah that "Dusty old cynic that I am, it moved me greatly" and that to Lascelles it was reminiscent of Queen Elizabeth I's speech at Tilbury and Queen Victoria's quotation in which she promised "I will be good". Lascelles told Elizabeth that he was glad the speech had made her cry because "if it makes you cry now it will make 200 million other people cry when they hear you". The speech was made lighter in tone by the King and Queen and Elizabeth alongside Frank Gillard, who was coordinating the BBC's coverage of the tour. The speech was pre-recorded on 13 April while Elizabeth was at the Victoria Falls Hotel in Southern Rhodesia, on the present day border of Zimbabwe and Zambia. Elizabeth was recorded reading the speech for a newsreel in the garden of the hotel before recording the speech for the later BBC radio broadcast. In the speech Elizabeth said that she welcomed "the opportunity to speak to all the peoples of the British Commonwealth and Empire, wherever they live, whatever race