Friday, February 04, 2011

1938 - the king's speech

On Boxing Day we all went to see The King's Speech. I was sure that I had written a post on it, but apparently not. Certainly I can't find it!

I will come back to it. In the meantime, I just wanted to include this link showing King George VI opening the  Empire Exhibition at Ibrox Park, Glasgow, Scotland.

You can see how strained his speech was. 

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the link to the old newsreel. I saw the film (The King's Speech) and then read the Wikipedia entry on Logue which says the King gave a relatively stammer-free speech at the opening of the Australian Parliament in 1927, eleven years before this newsreel. The text accompanying this newsreel says the stammer here was severe. I didn't think so - Firth's rendering of the King's 'cured' speech matched it well, I thought.

Jim Belshaw said...

I am glad that you liked this, anon. Like you, I wondered about the historical accuracy and so looked it up. It made better drama to use the speech to the Empire rathet than the 1927 speech. I then decided that that was okay since Logue was still there providing support.

I agree with your assessment of the speech itself. All very interesting!