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Introduction On December 25, 1932, a gravelly, hesitant voice crackled across the ionosphere, reaching into the drawing rooms of Toronto, the sheep stations of the Australian outback, the verandas of colonial India, and the ships navigating the Atlantic. It was the voice of King George V, speaking from a small room at Sandringham House. “I speak now from my home and from my heart to you all,” he intoned. This, the first Royal Christmas Message, was the inaugural moment of a new kind of empire. It was no longer an empire held together solely by naval tonnage, trade tariffs, or…