Mark Logue – författare

Lionel Logue was a self-taught and almost unknown Australian speech therapist. Yet it was this outgoing, amiable man who almost single-handedly turned the nervous, tongue-tied Duke of York into one of Britain''s greatest kings after his brother, Edward VIII, abdicated in 1936 over his love for Mrs Simpson.The King''s Speech is the previously untold story of the remarkable relationship between Logue and the haunted future King George VI, written with Logue''s grandson and drawing exclusively from his grandfather Lionel''s diaries and archive.This is an astonishing insight into the House of Windsor at the time of its greatest crisis. Never before has there been such a portrait of the British monarchy seen through the eyes of an Australian commoner who was proud to serve, and save, his King.

The broadcast that George VI made to the nation on the outbreak of war in September 1939 - which formed the climax of the multi Oscar-winning film The King''s Speech - was the product of years of hard work with Lionel Logue, his iconoclastic Australian-born speech therapist. Yet the relationship between the two men did not end there. Far from it: in the years that followed, Logue was to play an even more important role at the monarch''s side.The King''s War follows this relationship through the dark days of Dunkirk and the drama of D-Day to eventual victory in 1945 - and beyond. It is written by Peter Conradi, a Sunday Times journalist, and Mark Logue, Lionel''s grandson, whose previous book, The King''s Speech: How One Man Saved the British Monarchy, was a best-seller in Britain and America and translated into more than 20 languages.The book draws on exclusive material from the Logue Archive - the collection of diaries, letters and other documents left by Lionel and his feisty wife, Myrtle. It provides a fascinating portrait of two men and their respective families - the Windsors and the Logues - as they together faced up to the greatest challenge in Britain''s history.