Apologies if the headline is a spoiler for Downton Abbey fans but the introduction of a wireless to the household is hardly an object of intrigue and unlikely to detract from the high drama we’re likely to see in Series Five. Nonetheless, the event holds some interest for those of us in radio.

As the story’s told: Lady Rose has little success in convincing Lord Grantham to shell out the readies to instal this new fangled and rather expensive piece of kit in Downton.  By episode two her luck changes when it is discovered that King George V will be addressing the nation in an historic broadcast – the first time that a British Monarch would be heard on the airwaves. This news gets His Majesty’s loyal subject, Lord G, over the line and a brand new set is duly delivered.

The actual broadcast which was written into the script for the hit television series took place in 1924 at the opening of the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley. This event is not to be confused with the story for the movie The King’s Speech which follows the fortunes of a stuttering King George VI (Colin Firth) who, with the help of a speech therapist (Geoffrey Rush) overcomes his impediment to deliver an inspirational address to the nation on the brink of WWII in 1939.

According to historians contacted by Bloomberg, the 1924 event, just two years after the BBC was founded, aroused such excitement that traffic was stopped and loudspeakers were set up on footpaths outside large stores so people could listen. The occasion was, says Maurice Roche in his history of mass exhibitions, “the first time the British public as a whole had been gathered together to participate in a national event through the new medium.”

Prior to the broadcast, only a handful of British subjects had ever heard the king’s voice. Suddenly, the monarch was almost touchable — right there in the living room, so to speak.

Read more at BloombergView.