Queen Elizabeth, a YouTube hit

The Christmas video message by the Queen in 1957 has received more than one million views on the website

Queen Elizabeth, a YouTube hit

The Christmas video message by the Queen in 1957 has received more than one million views on the website

The Royal family launched a dedicated channel on the video-sharing website in 2007.

This winter it passed a milestone of nine million views, thanks in part to the Queen's most recent Christmas Day broadcast, which has been viewed 82,000 times.

However, it is the historic 1957 address that has proved the most popular, receiving almost 1.2 million hits.
Broadcast from Sandringham in grainy black and white, the seven-minute message illustrates how times have changed.

The 31-year-old Queen, dressed in a three-stringed pearl necklace, spoke in clipped tones and glanced down at a written script as she expressed hopes that the "new medium" of television would bring her closer to her subjects.
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"It is inevitable that I should seem a remote figure to many of you, a successor to the kings and queens of history.

Someone whose face is familiar in newspapers and films, but who never really touches your personal lives. But now, at least for a few minutes.

I welcome you to the peace of my own home," she said.

The Queen also called for the protection of religion and moral decency in Britain, in an age of rapid technological change.

"It is not the new inventions that are the difficulty.

The trouble is caused by unthinking people who carelessly throw away ageless ideals as if they were old and outworn machinery. They would have religion thrown aside, morality in personal and public life made meaningless."

One of the most recent videos uploaded to The Royal Channel features Prince William and Kate Middleton being interviewed about their engagement, It has received 43,000 hits.

A Buckingham Palace aide said, "The Royal Household is very forward thinking in embracing new technology. We are doing very well. The archive footage has proved the most popular."

43,000
The number of hits received for the Prince William and Kate Middleton engagement interview