This weekend the annual Wordfest took place in Cambridge. It runs over three days each Spring and this year had a wide range of events with strands covering art, history, crime, memoir, education and global issues as well as first-class inspirational fiction, poetry, workshops, and events for children.
A highlight was a talk by the authors of the book on The King’s Speech, which has recently been made into an Oscar-winning film starring Colin Firth. The book is based on the extraordinary relationship between King George VI and Lionel Logue, the unknown, unqualified speech therapist who turned the nervous, tongue-tied Duke of York into the man capable of becoming King. Mark Logue, Lionel’s grandson, and Peter Conradi have drawn from Logue’s unpublished personal diaries to make an intimate portrait of the British monarchy at a time of its greatest crisis.
The film and the book have been extremely popular in many countries and especially in Britain, reinforcing our affection for the monarchy, as we look forward to celebrating the wedding of the Queen’s grandson Prince William to Miss Catherine Middleton on Friday 29th April 2011.
