The magic of speech

Not yet, since you ask. And I doubt if I ever will. My aversion to multiplex cinemas, with their cheerless foyers and their hordes of texting, tweeting cola-hydrated popcorn-gobblers, has deterred me from seeing new movies lately. The King’s Speech eluded me until it arrived, in its original form as a play, in the West End. You know the plot: stammering monarch makes boob-free speech. What’s striking is that the writer David Seidler has managed to hang his entire drama, and by implication the destiny of Britain, on such a footling little crisis. His script is a tad short on analysis. We learn the facts of Bertie’s troubled childhood — the bullying, the leg braces and the suppression of his left-handedness — and we’re expected to join the dots and conclude that these woes triggered his stammer. How, exactly, we’re never told.

The minor historical figures are as sketchy as Enid Blyton characters rewritten by Jeffrey Archer.