Moving and well-acted story spoiled by so many historical errors

Rating: 7/10 (6 January 2011)

The moving story of the unready monarch overcoming his speech impediment, making a friend of the therapist and doing his wartime duty in a most admirable fashion, with much loving support from his wife and children.
But spoiled for me by the many historical errors and implausibilities e.g. (1) Churchill kept popping up in most unlikely situations and was quite inaccurately presented as a critic of Edward VIII; (2) The film quite inaccurately asserts that George V was frightened of his father Edward VII. In fact the latter, unlike his son, was a kind father. (3) The Nuremberg Rally and the Coronation would not have been in the same Newsreel as they occurred months apart. (4) Baldwin did not retire as Prime Minister in 1937 because he felt he had let the country down over Hitler. In fact he supported Chamberlain's subsequent policy of appeasement.
It was also disconcerting to see the Coronation being rehearsed in Ely Cathedral rather than Westminster Abbey and the generous use in the sound-track of orchestral masterpieces by Mozart and Beethoven, played very loud, was very odd for a monarch whose idea of good music was the Boy Scout song "Crest of a Wave".