'Radio Times': The Royal Wedding

'Radio Times' commemorates the wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten with a lavish 'Radio Times' cover. The magazine also describes the wedding inside Westminster Abbey, the route of the royal procession and an order of service for the day. Finally, the advertised schedule for the day offers viewers and listeners their best guess at what they might be able to experience via BBC TV and radio. A selection from the surviving radio broadcast is also available as part of this collection.

Article courtesy of 'The Radio Times' Magazine.

This was the first royal wedding to be extensively filmed and broadcast on television. It required all the ingenuity of the Outside Broadcasting Unit, but the technical problems were so great that it was considered best to advertise only half of what the BBC intended to film. Church authorities would not allow filming of the wedding ceremony inside Westminster Abbey, so viewers had to switch to radio for that part of the day. A more extensive film was compiled for the evening programme at 8.30pm.