The King's Speech - Mark Logue [3]
At the time, I don’t remember being much impressed by my father’s talent. Looking back on the scene as an adult, however, I can appreciate both his perseverance and the acute frustration he must have felt at my reluctance to share the love of poetry that his father had instilled in him.
Filming ended in January 2010, and this also marked the beginning of a more personal voyage of discovery for me. Canning and Hooper did not set out to make a documentary but rather a biopic, which, although true to the spirit of my grandfather, concentrates on a narrow period of time: from the first meeting between my grandfather and the future King in 1926 until the outbreak of war in 1939.
Inspired by the film, I wanted to tell the complete story of my grandfather’s life, from his childhood in Adelaide, South Australia, in the 1880s right the way through to his death. Thus I started extensive and detailed research into his character and what he had done during his life. It was in many ways a frustrating process because, despite Lionel’s professional status, very little was known about the methods he employed with the King. Although he wrote a few articles for the press about the treatment of stammering and other speech impediments, he never set out his methods in a formal way and had no student or apprentice with whom to share the secrets of his work. Nor – probably because of the discretion with which he always treated his relationship with the King – did he write up his most famous case.
Then, in July 2010, with the publishers pressing for the manuscript, my perseverance finally paid off. On hearing of my quest for material, my cousin, Alex Marshall, contacted me to say that she had found some boxes of documents relating to my grandfather. She didn’t think they would be of much use but, even so, I invited myself up to her home in Rutland to take a look. I was greeted with several volumes arranged on a table in her dining room: there were two Bankers Boxes full of correspondence between the King and Lionel dating from 1926 to 1952 and two more boxes filled with manuscripts and press cuttings, which Lionel had carefully glued into two big scrapbooks, one green and the other blue.
To my delight, Alex also had the missing parts of the archive, together with three volumes of letters and a section of diary that my grandmother, Myrtle, kept when she and my grandfather embarked on a trip round the world in 1910, and also during the first few months of the Second World War. Written in a more personal style than Lionel’s diary, this gave a far more revealing insight into the minutiae of their life together. The documents, running to hundreds of pages, were a fascinating treasure trove that I spent days going through and deciphering; my only regret was that the letter that I had been so desperate to find was not among them.
It is all this material that forms the basis for this book, which Peter Conradi, an author and journalist with The Sunday Times, has helped me to put together. I hope that in reading it, you will come to share my fascination with my grandfather and his unique and very close relationship with King George VI.
Although I have endeavoured to research my grandfather’s life exhaustively, there may be pieces of information about him that still remain undiscovered. If you are related to Lionel Logue, were a patient or colleague of his, or if you have any other information about him and his work, I would love to hear from you. I can be contacted on lionellogue@gmail.com
Mark Logue
London, August 2010
CHAPTER ONE
God Save the King
The royal party on their way to the coronation of George VI
Albert Frederick Arthur George, King of the United Kingdom and the British