Reviews for The King's Speech: How One Man Saved the British Monarchy

The average rating for The King's Speech: How One Man Saved the British Monarchy based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-01-15 00:00:00 Robert Stansell 4.5 stars. I expected to skim the book to see what the real story behind the movie was, where the movie differed from reality, and maybe a bit more info about Logue. But I ended up reading every word! Let me be clear though, this is not the story of the movie. It's a shame that the cover has a picture from the film. I know it's good for sales, but it's misleading for people who will expect a similar narrative story. The movie was the dramatization of some of the events in the book. It covered a shorter period of time, and it blurred some things together and changed some of the facts around; the goal of the movie was to entertain by telling a mostly true story, it was a biopic not a documentary. This is a history book, based on facts supported by original source materials. It doesn't have the passion and drama of the movie. But it is surprisingly engaging. The authors have quite a deft touch at weaving what could have been just a list of facts into an interesting book. Each chapter has an arc, the personalities of the people involved come across, and overall it was very enjoyable. For me to read and entire non-fiction book, you know it had to be good! I'm not patient enough to read something dry and dull. The book is about the history of two men, Lionel Logue and King George VI, especially as their paths intersect. It isn't family tales told around the dinner table, it's based entire on documents, letters, case notes, pictures, etc. As a necessary background to the histories being explored, there is also a tightly focused coverage of English history during the lives of these two men, with a dash of Australian history as well. Each man's individual history was quite interesting, and seeing them play out together over the same period of time provided an interesting contrast between the experiences of a man so powerful but with so many responsibilities as to have very little freedom, and a man with no power but the freedom to do as he wished. It was interesting to see how the relationship between these two men developed and played out. Contrary to what the movie portrayed, they were not constant companions from their first meeting until the end. That scene where they go walking in the park and Logue tells the then Duke that he'd be a good king never happened. They had an intense working relationship for a short period of time after the World's Fair speech shown at the beginning of the movie, but were only in touch by letter from that point until the abdication. But they were in touch. Their letters had a very friendly tone that is quite surprising for a relationship between a Duke and a commoner. And once the Duke became the King, their working relationship resumed and their friendship become even deeper. Reading their story made me wonder, who can someone like a King or a Queen of England really be friends with, especially in older, more formal times? Between protocol, sycophants, etc., how important it must have been to have someone to trust, especially with something that made the King feel so vulnerable and helpless. Not that Logue and the King were best buds, but they continually corresponded even when not actively working together, and there seems to be a special level of honesty and warmth that was probably quite rare for the King. I found the refresher course in English history to be as interesting as the information about the men. It had been some time since I read anything about World War II, for example. The statistics about the Blitz were shocking to me after living through 9/11, just as an American and not even as a citizen of New York. 43,000 civilians were killed and over 1 million homes damaged or destroyed in the London area alone, just during those terrible 75 nights. I can't imagine living in that kind of fear, and with that anger and grief. Overall, this is a very well written, relatively short biography/history book. I really enjoyed learning more about the people portrayed and the times they lived in.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-06-03 00:00:00 Manogaran Ekambram I wanted to read this because I had really enjoyed the movie version and was curious how much of the events in the film had been fictionalized. Surprisingly, the movie was fairly accurate. Mark Logue, who is the grandson of speech therapist Lionel Logue, used family scrapbooks, journals and letters to create this account of Lionel's experience helping the Duke of York (later known as King George VI) with his lifelong stammer. The two men became friends, which seemed to comfort the Duke as he tried to improve his public speaking skills. Because the men worked together for so many years ' starting in 1926 and through World War II ' the book also highlights the history of England during that time, which was interesting. It is a nice complement to other books about the run-up to the war. If you've seen the movie with Colin Firth, you know that it focuses more on the perspective of the Duke, nicknamed Bertie. The book has more background on Lionel and his family, including how they immigrated to England, which was interesting. I listened to this on audio, narrated by Simon Vance, and it was good way to hear this story. The version I listened to also included a recording of the famous war speech by King George VII. I would recommend it to fellow history buffs. Note The subtitle of this book, How One Man Saved the British Monarchy, is a bit ridiculous. It is so hyperbolic that an editor or publisher must have come up with it in an effort to sell more books. As helpful as it was to have a good speech therapist for the king, would the English monarchy really have been destroyed if Logue hadn't been there? Favorite Passage "Even with the benefit of more than half a century's worth of hindsight, establishing quite how Logue succeeded with the King where those who preceded him had failed still remains something of a challenge. The various breathing exercises on which he put such emphasis certainly appear to have helped ' the King, for one, appears to have been convinced of that. Important, too, was the effort that Logue put into going through the texts of the various speeches that had been written for him, removing words and phrases that he knew could potentially trip up his royal pupil. In a sense, though, this was not so much curing the problem, as avoiding it ' yet there seems little doubt that by eliminating the largest of such stumbling blocks, Logue helped to build up the King's confidence, ensuring that the speech as a whole, with all the other lesser challenges it contained, proved less daunting. "Ultimately, though, the crucial factor appears to have been the way in which Logue, from the start, managed to persuade his patient that his was no deep seated psychological affliction, but rather an almost mechanical problem that could be overcome through hard work and determination. An important part of this was the closeness of the relationship that developed between the two men, which was helped by Logue's non-nonsense approach. By insisting from the beginning that they should meet in his practice in Harley Street or at his own home, rather than on royal territory, Logue had made clear his intention that the King should be his patient; over the years this was to turn into a genuine friendship."