The King's Speech: How One Man Saved the British Monarchy

Published to coincide with the Oscar-winning film of the same name, this memoir by the grandson of speech therapist Logue (memorably played by Geoffrey Rush) retells the story of George VI's triumph over a speech defect from a more intimate, familial perspective. Simon Vance, familiar to many readers for his work on Stieg Larsson's novels, offers such a fluent and silky reading, it's as if he, too, had practiced his speechmaking with Logue. The audiobook's highlight is the recording of the speech delivered on September 3, 1939. Having been so lavishly informed of the struggles that went into the preparation of the speech, its delivery, the listener hears each pause and intonation with the greatest drama. A Sterling paperback. (Mar.)