The Queen's Christmas speech this year is available as a podcast for the first time in the history of the annual message.
The Queen will highlight in her 2006 message how all religions stress the need to nurture and guide the young.
A podcast of her December 25 message can be ordered free in advance on the British Monarchy's website, www.royal.gov.uk.
Subscribers will automatically receive the podcast on Christmas Day at 3pm, when the Queen's address is aired across the Commonwealth.
The Queen has also recorded a radio message for the Armed Services and their families, which will be played to troops on Christmas Eve morning.
The Queen's grandfather, King George V, delivered the first royal Christmas broadcast live on the radio more than 70 years ago, from Sandringham in 1932. He was at first unsure about using the relatively untried medium of the wireless, but eventually agreed.
The Queen made her first Christmas broadcast in 1952 and the annual message was first televised in 1957.
She has delivered one every year except in 1969, when she decided the royals had been on TV enough after an unprecedented family documentary. Her greeting took the form of a written address'
In her 1991 message, the Queen silenced rumours of abdication as she pledged to continue to serve. She issued a writ against The Sun newspaper after it published the full text of her 1992 broadcast two days before transmission. She later accepted an apology and a £200,000 donation to charity.
There was no Christmas broadcast in 1936 or 1938, and it was the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 that firmly established the tradition.
www.royal.gov.uk(The British Monarchy's website)
