{"id":142782,"date":"2023-10-13T15:27:44","date_gmt":"2023-10-13T15:27:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theprojectsworld.com\/?p=142782"},"modified":"2023-10-13T15:27:44","modified_gmt":"2023-10-13T15:27:44","slug":"princess-elizabeth-addressed-the-nations-children-at-our-darkest-hour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theprojectsworld.com\/lifestyle\/princess-elizabeth-addressed-the-nations-children-at-our-darkest-hour\/","title":{"rendered":"Princess Elizabeth addressed the nation&apos;s children at our darkest hour"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1>It was our darkest hour. France had fallen and the Blitz rained fire from the skies. That&#8217;s when Churchill asked 14-year-old Princess Elizabeth to address the nation&#8217;s children &#8211; with a radio broadcast so touching it has echoed down the decades&#8230;<\/h1>\n<ul>\n<li><span>It was on this day, October 13, that Queen Elizabeth made her first broadcast<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span>She movingly recalled her words 80 years later at the height of COVID-19<\/span><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>For all the latest Royal news, pictures and videos click\u00a0here<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Sunday October 13, 1940. France had fallen and, with the autumn light fading, the Battle of Britain still raged above the southern counties.<\/p>\n<p>Just a few weeks earlier, the Blitz started raining fire from the skies and long queues of child refugees now formed at the stations. The threat of invasion was real.<\/p>\n<p>This was the moment that 14-year-old Princess Elizabeth was asked to speak to the\u00a0 \u00a0the nation and its children &#8211; and in particular those who were being sent sent to safety in the countryside far away from home.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2023\/10\/13\/12\/76328891-12609757-A_14_year_old_Princess_Elizabeth_delivered_her_very_first_public-a-19_1697197874719.jpg\" height=\"460\" width=\"634\"><\/p>\n<p>A 14-year-old Princess Elizabeth delivered her very first public address to Britain&#8217;s evacuee children on\u00a0October 13, 1940<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2023\/10\/13\/12\/76328903-12609757-Elizabeth_was_asked_by_Prime_Minister_Winston_Churchill_to_give_-a-20_1697197875037.jpg\" height=\"388\" width=\"634\"><\/p>\n<p>Elizabeth was asked by Prime Minister Winston Churchill to give a morale boost to children separated from their families and sent to the countryside<\/p>\n<p>Broadcast from the drawing room of Windsor Castle as part of the\u00a0BBC&#8217;s Children&#8217;s Hour, this was Princess Elizabeth&#8217;s first appearance on the radio &#8211; and her first public statement of any sort. Ten-year-old Margaret Rose was by her side.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;Thousands of you in this country have had to leave your homes and be separated from your fathers and mothers,&#8217; said the future Queen.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;My sister Margaret Rose and I feel so much for you, as we know from experience what it means to be away from those you love most of all.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;To you living in new surroundings, we send a message of true sympathy and at the same time we would like to thank the kind people who have welcomed you to their homes in the country.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>The two princesses had themselves been moved to safety from Buckingham Palace, where they had lived since 1937 and their father&#8217;s accession to the throne, to Windsor Castle 20 miles away.<\/p>\n<p>The government had urged the\u00a0Queen mother to leave for Canada\u00a0with her daughters but she refused, saying, &#8216;The children won&#8217;t go without me. I won&#8217;t leave without the King. And the King will never leave.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>With the disaster of Dunkirk still fresh in the memory, this was the period that Churchill would later describe as our darkest hour.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Now he had asked Elizabeth, the future queen, to help lift national morale and, in particular, to address the plight of those children apart from their families.<\/p>\n<h3>READ MORE:\u00a0How the Queen&#8217;s sense of duty was cemented during the war: Her Majesty was evacuated to Windsor Castle aged 13 where she gave her first public address and put on a pantomime to raise spirits<\/h3>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Over the six years of the war, more than two million children were sent to the countryside\u00a0 in a programme the military called Operation Pied Piper.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Closing the broadcast, Elizabeth introduced her younger sister, saying: &#8216;My sister is by my side and we are both going to say good night to you. Come on, Margaret.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>Margaret added: &#8216;Good night, children,&#8217; before Elizabeth said: &#8216;Good night, and good luck to you all.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>The speech was considered a huge success and this broadcast marked the beginning of a regular series of features aimed child evacuees.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>King George VI, had been reluctant to put his daughter on air, but was delighted with the result.<\/p>\n<p>In another moving speech to the nation, almost eight decades later in April 2020, the Queen recalled that first broadcast, noting that\u00a0the COVID-19 pandemic reminded her of the separation felt during the war.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;We, as children, spoke from here at Windsor to children who had been evacuated from their homes and sent away for their own safet<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;Today, once again, many will feel a painful sense of separation from their loved ones.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;But now, as then, we know, deep down, that it is the right thing to do.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2023\/10\/13\/12\/76328889-12609757-Fourteen_year_old_Elizabeth_the_future_monarch_sat_side_by_side_-a-18_1697197874377.jpg\" height=\"422\" width=\"634\"><\/p>\n<p>Fourteen-year-old Elizabeth, the future monarch, sat side-by-side with her sister, then known to the nation as Princess Margaret Rose, to address the children of Britain and the Commonwealth<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2023\/10\/13\/12\/76328897-12609757-More_than_two_million_children_were_sent_to_the_countryside_many-a-17_1697197874309.jpg\" height=\"477\" width=\"634\"><\/p>\n<p>More than two million children were sent to the countryside, many wearing name tags around their necks in a programme the military called Operation Pied Piper<\/p>\n<p>Source: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/femail\/article-12609757\/Darkest-hour-Churchill-Princess-Elizabeth-broadcast.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read Full Article<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It was our darkest hour. France had fallen and the Blitz rained fire from the skies. That&#8217;s when Churchill asked&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":142781,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Princess Elizabeth addressed the nation&amp;apos;s children at our darkest hour - The Projects World<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/theprojectsworld.com\/lifestyle\/princess-elizabeth-addressed-the-nations-children-at-our-darkest-hour\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Princess Elizabeth addressed the nation&amp;apos;s children at our darkest hour - The Projects World\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It was our darkest hour. 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