The King's Speech

In 1926, the Duke of York—who had suffered from a stutter since childhood—asked for help from a self-taught speech therapist, an emigrant from Australia named Lionel Log. It was a desperate step: a great deal of effort had already been spent trying to overcome this physical defect, involving the best specialists of the time—without success, and every public speech by the Duke became torture both for listeners and for the speaker himself. Stepping for the first time into the modest waiting room of Log, the royal son could not have imagined that ten years later he would become a monarch. By the right of succession, the throne belonged first to his older brother, David—but personal happiness for the latter proved more important than duty.

Lionel Log, whom medical authorities had considered a fraud and a charlatan, managed to succeed, while others had to admit their helplessness. He developed his own method and stayed with his famous patient for many years, through the country’s— and all of Europe’s—hard trials. Ascending the throne on the eve of World War II, George VI rallied the British in the fight against Nazism and became a true leader. Throughout his reign, from the coronation speech in 1937 to his final Christmas address to the nation and peoples of the British Empire in December 1951, the king spoke to his people—thanks to the “simple man from the colonies” who had crossed his path: Lionel Log.

The authors of this documentary book, based on letters, diaries, memoirs, and medical records, are Mark Log, the grandson of the Australian speech therapist and custodian of his archive, and Peter Conradi, a writer and journalist who works on the Sunday Times editorial team.