George VI, Britain’s king during World War II, is sympathetically portrayed in the new film, “The King’s Speech,” which recreates the monarch’s heroic efforts to overcome his life-long stammer.  The climax of the film is the king’s broadcast to the peoples of his empire, urging them to stand “calm and firm and united” in the forthcoming struggle against Nazi Germany.

But George VI is better known for the Christmas broadcast he gave a few months later. 

King George – the father of the present queen – was king by accident.  He was the plodding, dutiful second son, almost totally eclipsed by his dashing, golden-haired older brother, who ascended the British throne in 1936 as Edward VIII.

After less than a year on the job, however, Edward skipped off to marry an American divorcee, Wallis Simpson.  The scandal nearly sank the monarchy.  But George succeeded his brother, and strove doggedly to salvage the crown’s prestige.

It was a daunting task.  George had not been trained for the job of being king. He had none of his brother’s easy charm.  He was a shy, stammering man for whom public speaking was torture.

Yet a modern king must be heard as well as seen.  George’s father,  George V, had recognized this, and established the custom of the sovereign’s annual Christmas radio message – a message broadcast not only to the people of Britain, but also to the far-flung dominions and colonies that made up Britain’s imperial family.  So if the monarch stumbled before the microphone, it was tantamount to performing a pratfall before the entire English-speaking world.

George V had been blessed with a rich, plummy voice and perfect diction, and had excelled at these broadcasts.  He was a tough act to follow, especially for a man with a stammer.  So for the first three Christmases of his of his reign, George VI chose not make the holiday broadcast.

But in 1939, with Britain fighting for her life against Hitler, the king felt duty-bound to offer his people what comfort he could by speaking to them at Christmas, regardless of what the effort cost him. 

Fortunately, he had help.  “The King’s Speech” depicts the warm relationship that developed between George VI and his Australian-born speech therapist, Lionel Logue.  Logue would later remark that his royal patient was “the pluckiest and most determined” he ever had.

But it was someone else who ensured the success of the king’s 1939 Christmas broadcast.  Someone at the palace (the consensus is that  it was his wife) gave the king some lines from an obscure book of poetry that had been published thirty years before. 

These lines suited perfectly the message of hope that the king wished to give his people, and he used them with great effect at the end of the broadcast:

I said to the man who stood at the Gate of the Year

“Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.”

And he replied,

“Go out into the darkness, and put your hand into the hand of God.

That shall be to you better than a light, and safer than a known way.”

The king concluded: “May that Almighty hand uphold and guide us all.”

The poem made the broadcast.  And, one might almost say that it made King George.

It is impossible to exaggerate the effect that this brief radio address had on British morale, or on the British people’s affection for their king.  Forever after, the lines he quoted during that fateful broadcast were associated in the public mind with George VI.  When the king died in 1952, they were engraved on his tomb. 

Whether it was his queen or someone else who supplied King George with the perfect quote for the occasion, that person had a speechwriter’s instinct.

Speechwriters should remain discreetly in the background, but that doesn’t mean that there are no heroes in our profession.  Happy holidays to speechwriters everywhere.

(Photo: Formal portrait of King George VI, circa 1940-46)