by Mandy Wilks

Created on: January 23, 2011   Last Updated: January 24, 2011

‘The King’s Speech’ is a 2010 Tom Hooper film that is forecast to become a real block buster and the recipient of many Oscars and other awards.

It is a film that the late Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, said would never be made in her lifetime and is the true story that deals with her husband, King George Vl (Bertie) and his relationship with his speech therapist, Lionel Logue, as he struggles to overcome his dreadful speech impediment when the role of king is suddenly thrust upon him.

Starting with a short prologue where the Duke of York, Albert Frederick Arthur George, (known to family as Bertie and played wonderfully by Colin Firth) delivers an agonizing speech at Wembley Stadium during the 1924 Empire exhibition – where the problems he has with the chronic stammer that has hampered him from childhood become all too evident; the film then moves on to the 1930’s with a depression running though the country, there are four major historical aspects covered. First there is the death of George V (played by Michael Gambon) in 1936, secondly the accession to the throne of Edward VIII (Guy Pearce) - a position that he never takes up as he abdicates in order to marry American double divorcee Wallis Simpson (Eve Best); then the coronation of Bertie as he becomes George VI, supported by his devoted wife Elizabeth (Helena Bonham-Carter) finishing with the outbreak of war in 1939.

The story may be rather predictable, but it is a wonderfully moving story of human triumph that observes the social and political history of Britain and Bertie’s private life in an accurate and sympathetic way and also adds a new perspective on the abdication of Edward.

There doesn’t seem to be any known reason for the terrible stammer that Bertie struggles with, but after the unfortunate Wembley speech several speech therapists try to help Bertie with his problem, a task that becomes more necessary when it is evident that he will become King of England. His supportive wife, Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, engages a new Australian speech therapist to help her desolate husband. He turns out to be he rather eccentric and controversial Lionel Logue (played by Geoffrey Rush). Logue isn't actually a doctor, in fact he is an amateur actor who has no academic credentials, consequently he is seen by many to be a as a fraud. However his unorthodox ideas that conclude Bertie’s problems are just as much a psychological problem as a physiological one and come

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