Voyage of discovery about King’s speech therapist

With the huge success of The King’s Speech, Mark Logue lost a grandfather who was now suddenly public property.

During the making of the film, even Mark started to talk about Lionel or Lionel Logue rather than “my grandfather.”

Now, with the publication of his book The King’s Speech, Mark feels he has finally reclaimed just a little for himself the man who was so famously the King’s speech therapist - a man he will discuss for the Chichester Festivities in St John’s Chapel, St John’s Street, on Saturday, July 9 at 6pm.

The film deals with the years 1926-1939.

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And yet as Mark discovered, his grandfather in his early years in Australia had a career complete in itself as an actor and as an elocutionist.

And in the years that followed the King’s great speech at the start of the war - the speech which closes the film - Logue remained absolutely central to the King, ever-present at all his speeches until 1944.

Mark has drawn on all the years both before and after the events depicted in the movie, to tell the full story of the fascinating maverick who just happened to be his own grandfather.

For Mark, it’s all been a voyage of discovery.

“It’s not something I have always known about. The first time I ever heard about it was 2001 when my father passed away and he left stuff that had been passed on by his brother - all the archives and letters and photos and scrap books.

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“I had always known that my grandfather had been the King’s speech therapist, but I had never asked my father about it until it was too late. But it was another five or six years until I really looked at the contents. In 2001, I had too much to deal with. It really did require a serious investment of time and effort to transcribe the diaries. They were all hand written on pieces of fading paper in pencil. It was hard work. It was a fairly formidable task, 600-700 individual bits of paper.

“And then it wasn’t until 2009 that the film people approached me asking for any mementos or material which I then shared with them. The film was happening anyway, but it galvanised my interest.

“The scriptwriter David Seidler was a stammerer as a child and he remembers being told that the King was a stammerer and here was a figure who was a glimmer of hope, someone who had overcome stammering. In the early 80s, he decided to write the story as almost a cathartic process, and in 1981 he wrote to my uncle for access to the letters.”

Mark’s uncle sent an inquiry to Clarence House to the Queen Mother; the reply came back that she didn’t want the film made in her lifetime: “He very dutifully shelved the project. She was in her 80s. He didn’t know how long he would wait. In the end, he waited more than 20 years before she passed on. He didn’t start again until 2005, by which time he correctly assumed that my uncle was no longer with us. Because the trail that led to Logue had dried up, he continued with his own researches and incredibly to a large extent he got it right.”

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And then later on, Mark was brought in with his archive - the point at which his grandfather became worldwide property.

“I wanted to reclaim some of him for myself. It was an itch I wanted to scratch. There was so much information that predated the film - and so much after it.”

Information that became the book that Mark will discuss for the Chichester Festivities.

The King’s Speech will be screened on Sunday, July 10 at 1.30pm in Chichester Cinema at New Park.