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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 no-nonsense approach. By insisting from the beginning that they should meet in his practice at 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.

That being said, the two men’s very different positions in what was still a very class-ridden society meant that there were limits to how close this relationship could be – especially after Bertie became King. The tone, not just of Logue’s letters but also of entries in his diary, both of which have been quoted extensively in this book, reveal a deep respect not just for the King as a person but also for the institution of monarchy. Indeed, to a modern reader, the tone Logue adopts when writing of the King can seem fawning – especially more so in the case of the Queen Mother.

The last word belongs to one of the few people still alive at the time of writing who actually knew Logue well – his daughter-in-law Anne, who was married to his middle son Valentine, and who, in the summer of 2010, although already in her early nineties, remained enviably sharp and sprightly. Her opinions appeared to be given further weight by her career, which had culminated in her becoming Consultant in Child Psychiatry at the Middlesex Undergraduate Teaching Hospital.

Asked about the secret of her father-in-law’s success, Anne, too, was unable to give a definitive answer, but thought it was largely due to the rapport that Logue had developed with the future King when his patient was still a young man, rather than to any particular treatment. ‘Anyone can do tongue twisters and breathing exercises, but he was a first class psychotherapist,’ she said. ‘He was a super good daddy where George V had been a ghastly one.’

‘[Lionel] would never talk about what he did. But when you look at what happened and what he was dealing with, that can be the only answer. The King had heaps of other people who had been no use to him. Why else did he stay with him for such a long time?’

Notes

1 John W. Wheeler-Bennett, King George VI, His Life and Reign, London: Macmillan, 1958, p. 400.

2Ibid., p. 312.

3Time, 16 May 1938.

4 Quoted in Joy Damousi, ‘“The Australian has a lazy way of talking”: Australian Character and Accent, 1920s–1940s’, in Joy Damousi and Desley Deacon (eds), Talking and Listening in the Age of Modernity: Essays on the History of Sound, Canberra: ANU Press, 2007, pp. 83–96.

5 Lionel Logue papers, 25 March 1911.

6Sunday Times (Perth), 20 August 1911.

7West Australian, 27 May 1912.

8Sun (Kalgoorlie), 27 September 1914.

9 The following dialogue is taken from an account by John Gordon in the Sunday Express.

10 Marcel E. Wingate, Stuttering: A Short History of a Curious Disorder, Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey, 1997, p.11.

11Ibid., p. xx.

12Star, 11 January 1926.

13Pittsburgh Press, 1 December 1928.

14 Reported in the Daily Express, Friday