06 March,2011 08:26 AM IST | | Sunday Mid Day Team
The film is no gospel truth. In fact, it gets some of Europe's darkest moments incorrect
So, perhaps Prince Albert did call the Australian speech therapist Lionel Logue, "a jumped-up jackaroo from the outback". Perhaps the exchanges between Logue and the prince were as endearing as the one portrayed in The King's Speech. Or maybe a little dramatised. But of course, simply, for cinematic reasons. But as great as the film is, there are plenty of gross falsifications of historical events that must be kept in mind.
Firstly, the chronology of events has been tightened to just a few years. In actuality, Logue is set to have started work on the prince as early as October 1926, a full 10 years before King Edward VIII abdicated the throne. Also, the stutter was nothing as acute as the one depicted in the film.
Colin Firth in a still from The King's Speech
In fact, it was relatively mild, and when he was concentrating hard on what he was saying, it disappeared altogether. So, while Colin Firth can hardly say a sentence without prolonged stuttering, right up to the outbreak of war in 1939, records show that the prince's speech to the Australian parliament in Canberra in 1927 was delivered without stuttering.
While in the film Logue calls the prince 'Bertie', Robert Logue, the grandson of the therapist has recently stated, "I don't think he (Logue) ever swore in front of the king and he certainly never called him 'Bertie'."
But where the film gets its history terribly wrong is in the gloomy chapter called 'appeasement'. The film implies King George VI of being against appeasement. Far from distancing himself from Neville Chamberlain's appeasement policy, King George VI dispatched a car to meet Chamberlain when he returned from signing the Munich Agreement with Hitler where Chamberlain gave away a chunk of Europe to Germany (September 1938).
The king and Chamberlain then stood on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, acclaimed by cheering crowds. This was an extraordinary endorsement of a prime minister and his foreign policy, when according to protocol, the royals are supposed to stay out of politics. About the incident, the famous British historian Steven Runciman wrote that by acting as he did to endorse Chamberlain's foreign policy, King George VI perpetrated "the biggest constitutional blunder that has been made by any sovereign this century".
Churchill also never backed the abdication of Edward VIII. Instead, Churchill spoke out in favour of Edward and his romance with Wallis Simpson, the divorcee.
And while the final scene, where King George VI overcomes his stutter and declares war on Germany before waving to the crowds outside Buckingham Palace makes for a great ending, nothing could have been more factually absurd. None of the characters depictedu00a0-- The Archbishop of Canterbury Cosmo Gordon Lang, Chamberlain and Churchillu00a0-- turned up at Buckingham Palace on the day war broke out. Neither was there a crowd outside the palace to congratulate the king on his speech.
Royal mess
King George VI's stutter was nothing as acute as the one depicted in the film.u00a0 So, while Colin Firth can hardly say a sentence without prolonged stuttering, right up to the outbreak of war in 1939, records show that the prince's speech to the Australian parliament in Canberra in 1927 was delivered without stuttering.
