Queen's Speech to Be Made Available via Kindle

The Queen's annual Christmas day speech will this year be available as a free Kindle book.

Every year, millions tune in to watch Queen Elizabeth makes her televised Christmas Day speech. However, this year, the speech won't just be reaching people tuning in on TV -- the speech will be made available in Kindle format, too. Amazon has announced that transcripts of the Queen's 2011 speech, along with past addresses, will be available to download for free this Christmas.

"Millions of people across the UK, and the world, wait with anticipation to hear The Queen's Christmas Broadcast and we're delighted to be able to make transcripts of Her Majesty's annual addresses, past and present, available to download for free in less than 60 seconds," said Gordon Willoughby, Director, Kindle EU. "Many people will be unwrapping Kindles on Christmas Day and now Kindle readers, new and old, will be able to read The Queen’s words for years to come."

According to the BBC, Amazon secured access to the transcripts after it approached the Royal Household with a proposal for the project. The Royal Household said that it wanted as many people as possible to read or listen to the Queen's speech, and, as such, was happy for third parties to take the content and make it available on other platforms.

"The Royal Household is content for other organisations to take this content and make it available on as many other platforms as possible as long as the content is not altered or presented out of context," a spokeswoman at Buckingham Palace told the BBC. "We would like The Queen's Speech to be broadcast or read as widely as possible, and allowing Kindle to make the text available is just another example of this."