
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 —