Book info

• Title The King's Speech
• Author Mark Logue
• Year 2010
• Genre Biography

Lionel Logue was a self-taught and almost unknown Australian speech therapist. Yet it was this outgoing, amiable man who almost single-handedly turned the nervous, tongue-tied Duke of York into one of Britain's greatest kings after his brother, Edward VIII, abdicated in 1936 over his love for Mrs Simpson. The King's Speech is the previously untold story of the remarkable relationship between Logue and the haunted future King George VI, written with Logue's grandson and drawing exclusively from his grandfather Lionel's diaries and archive. This is an astonishing insight into the House of Windsor at the time of its greatest crisis. Never before has there been such a portrait of the British monarchy seen through the eyes of an Australian commoner who was proud to serve, and save, his King.

Thoughts

I’ve seen the film of this a long time ago, and I don’t know that it grabbed me so much that I wanted to read the book but somehow I ended up with this in my to read pile, so got to it eventually! It’s a good book, an interesting story about a life well lived in service of making other people’s speech and therefore lives a bit better. I guess by the end it was a little repetitive - the king was nervous about this speech but they practiced and then he did it, hooray! - but ultimately it’s a nice uplifting story.

Rating: 3 / 5