The King's Speech supplement
Colin Firth: 'Stammer the wrong way and it is comedic'
The King's Speech, which opens on Friday and is tipped for Oscar honours, concerns the terrible struggle George VI had with his speech impediment when he came to the throne in 1936. Colin Firth, in a rare interview, and director Tom Hooper talk about the making of this deeply moving film
The King's Speech: How George VI's simple domesticity made him the king his country needed in time of war
Like his fellow Britons, George VI dreaded another war so soon after the slaughter of the trenches. But in 1939 this nervous, sickly, stammering man forced himself to confront the inevitable and became an unlikely symbol of national resistance, writes historian Dominic Sandbrook
