Winning royal pedigree

SECOND in line to the English throne, Bertie, aka Albert (Colin Firth), is afflicted by a debilitating stutter.

The rise of radio as a mass medium in the 1920s, and the subsequent onus on the royal family to engage with its subjects, is reason enough for the desperate prince to approach unorthodox speech therapist Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush), but the abdication of Bertie’s brother, King Edward VIII (Guy Pearce), and the prospect of war with Hitler’s Germany, makes the curing of Bertie’s speech impediment a matter of vital national importance.

The King’s Speech (UK/12A/118 mins) offers an intriguing look at the minutiae of royal life, particularly during a time of crisis, but Tom Hooper’s film is a more emotionally enthralling experience than the bare bones of its synopsis might suggest. Logue’s farsighted approach to curing Bertie’s stutter involves digging beneath the prince’s stiff public persona to get at the psychological reasons for his impediment, which in turn leads to a poignant portrait of the man who would become King George VI.