What's in the Boxing Day papers

As readers who have ventured out to the newsagent will have discovered, the Guardian wasn't published today. But most of the other papers didn't let the dearth of major news stories stop them from going to press.

For the tabloids, the Queen's speech is the big shocker. "SNUBBUS HORRIBILIS", splashes the Sun. "THE Queen failed to welcome Camilla into her family yesterday — by NOT mentioning Prince Charles' wedding in her TV speech." In what the Mirror calls a "doom and gloom talk", the Queen reflected on a year dominated by the London bombings, the New Orleans floods, the earthquake in Pakistan and India and the aftermath of the Asian tsunami and spoke of the difficulty of maintaining one's faith in the knowledge of such suffering: "I have no doubt that the new year will be all the better if we do but try," she concluded. The Telegraph believes the speech hit exactly the right note: "The Queen's tone yesterday was one of human warmth and humility, and could not have been better judged to unite her audience."

Inevitably, the anniversary of last year's tsunami casts a long shadow over the papers. The Independent sent a reporter to Peraliya in Sri Lanka, where a train was inundated by the wave. "A year later, the train's last three rusty carriages have only just been taken away, and Peraliya is once again the focal point for the nation's grief. For Sri Lankans, Peraliya means the train, and the train means the tsunami," writes Stephen Khan. "Until last week the carriages stood like tombstones in the centre of the village, torn clothing in them serving as a reminder of the desperation of the last minutes of those on board."

The Times predicts a record turnout at Boxing Day hunts. Police have been frustrated by landowners' refusal to let them onto their land to make arrests, the paper says, and want new powers in order to do so. The Telegraph's splash highlights the government's plans to issue behavioural orders to unruly children aged under 10 before they have committed an offence.

Readers who are spending Boxing Day trying to tame a new Roboraptor may be intrigued by the Telegraph's report on a rather more domesticated robot.