King Charles has filmed this year's Christmas message broadcast in a former hospital chapel in Fitzrovia, London. This is the first time since 2006 that a Christmas broadcast has not been filmed inside a royal residence and reflects both the King and the Princess of Wales' cancer treatment.
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00:00I
00:27assume that with the particular year that the family have had, the chapel's connection
00:34to the hospital and to the wider healthcare profession, the medical profession, is what
00:40made it the choice for them. This space being one of calm reflection, but also thinking
00:47about health, about care, and about the medical profession would make it a pretty apt choice
00:55at that time. I think he was pretty surprised and kind of delighted as far as I can tell
01:01from coming in, discovering it. I think he was very interested in the marble. There's
01:06about 40 types of marble in here and lots of different designs and he wanted to learn
01:12about the history of the chapel and some of the people who are commemorated here. It was
01:16the chapel of the former Middlesex Hospital, which was one of the bigger hospitals in London
01:22until it closed in the mid-2000s. The Middlesex Hospital surrounded the chapel and so it looked
01:31quite different to what you see now today when you come. The hospital buildings were
01:35right up against the outside of the building. This was the chapel for the hospital, so staff,
01:42patients, family members came in here for peace, for quiet, for contemplation, for prayer.
01:49The University College London Hospital is still very close to the site of the chapel
01:54and the Middlesex Hospital merged with UCLH, so lots of the people who worked here are
01:58still working at UCLH. They've been involved with us, volunteered with us, sat on the board,
02:04and as I said, we have hospital groups. The hospital choir just did their Christmas concert
02:11here last week, so we still retain really close links with that hospital. We did feel very
02:16privileged to be chosen and I think for us it's just a really amazing opportunity to show this
02:23incredible space and to tell people a little bit about the history and about what it is
02:28and what it stands for on a scale that we could have never imagined being able to do.