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Then, with a fanfare of trumpets, it was all over. The gentlemen of the bedchamber walked out backwards, carrying their wands of office, followed by the King and Queen, with the pages carrying their trains, bowing right and left as all the women sank to the floor with a curtsy and the men stood to attention, with their heads bowed. Later, feeling flat and tired, Lionel and Myrtle sought out the supper rooms for chicken and champagne. After posing for photographs, they were on their way home. ‘I would never have believed it could be such an ordeal,’ recalled Myrtle, although she wrote back to Hodgson saying how much she had enjoyed the evening. On 26 July he invited them both to a Garden Party.

At this time the couple bought a little holiday bungalow, named Yolanda, on Thames Ditton Island in the River Thames. It was surrounded by roses and the lawn ran right down to the water’s edge. ‘Lionel needs a place of rest and peace to go through the spring and summer, and we were getting very tired of taking the children all over the Continent for a month and so missing the loveliest part of the English year, so we decided to stay in England for the summer,’ Myrtle explained. ‘This place is adorable! We have been down here every week all through the spring and summer. We fish, swim and enjoy boating and just “laze”; and thoroughly enjoy ourselves.’

Prince Alfred College inter-college Football Team 1896 Lionel stands beneath the teammate leaning against the doorway

Menu for a dinner given in honour of Lionel and a concert programme for one of the many recitals he gave

Lionel Logue and Myrtle Gruenert on their engagement, 1906

The Logue family on-board the Hobsons Bay, 1924 Left to right: Laurie, Tony, Myrtle, Valentine

Letter confirming Lionel’s first appointment with the then Duke of York

Antony Logue with Lionel shortly after their arrival in London in 1924

The appointment card on which Lionel noted his initial observations of the Duke after their first meeting in October 1926

Letter from the Duke expressing his gratitude at the progress he was already beginning to show at the start of his therapy. In the three months after his first interview, the Duke saw Lionel over fifty times

The Logue family dressed up in morning suits for Laurie’s wedding day, in July 1936, on the steps of Beechgrove Left to right: Laurie, Valentine, Myrtle, Lionel, Antony

The Duke leaving 145 Piccadilly on his way to St James’s Palace to take the Oath of Accession after the abdication of his brother, King Edward, 12 December 1936

King George VI’s first speech in public since his accession four months earlier, at the unveiling of the George V Memorial at Windsor on 23 April 1937

Lionel in his office at 146 Harley Street, with a portrait of Myrtle on his desk

Myrtle in her Coronation gown

George VI’s coronation on 12 May 1937. Logue and Myrtle are seated on the balcony above the Royal Box at Westminster Abbey

In the months that followed, the British newspapers increasingly carried articles commenting on the progress that the Duke was making – all of which were collected by Logue and pasted into a large green scrap book that has passed down the family.

Reporting on the Duke’s attendance at a fundraising banquet at the Mansion House in London for the Queen’s Hospital for Children, the Standard noted on 12 June 1928, ‘The Duke has vastly improved as a speaker and his hesitation has almost entirely gone. His plea for the children showed real eloquence.’ A writer from the North-Eastern Daily Gazette came to the same conclusion the following month after a speech by the Duke at another fundraising event for the hospital, this time at the Savoy. ‘Taking it all round, I am not sure that his speeches do not equal those made by the Prince of Wales,’ the newspaper commented. ‘And that is a pretty high standard. The Duke has learnt the speaker’s two most valuable lessons – wittiness and brevity. He used rather a good simile at