User:Jsomm1/sandbox

I underlined what Sweetpool50 kept from my original addition to the article, so this counts as an edit. I bolded everything that I think should be re-added. I took Sweetpool50's and Sharlore's advice concerning the timeline and dates, making it say that King Edward had POSSIBLE pro-Nazi sympathies instead of outright saying he had it, and other matters. I cited 4 sources, as listed in the references section. All other text on the page is part of the current Historical Accuracy section of the King's Speech article.

Relationship with Lionel Logue
The filmmakers not only tightened the chronology of the events to just a few years but even shifted the timeline of treatment. The Duke of York actually began working with Logue in October 1926, ten years before the abdication crisis, and the improvement in his speech was apparent in months rather than years as suggested by the film. When he was dispatched to Australia to open their new parliament in 1927, the Duke gave numerous speeches during the journey and performed well despite Logue not accompanying him on the trip. He wrote to Logue from the Caribbean, “You remember my fear of ‘The King’. I give it every evening at dinner on board. This does not worry me anymore”. And of his speech opening Parliament it was observed that he spoke "resonantly and without stuttering", despite the speech taking place only seven months after the Duke started seeing Logue.

Robert Logue, a grandson of Lionel, doubted the film's depiction of the speech therapist, stating "I don't think he ever swore in front of the King and he certainly never called him 'Bertie'". Andrew Roberts, an English historian, states that the severity of the King's stammer was exaggerated and the characters of Edward VIII, Wallis Simpson, and George V made more antagonistic than they really were, to increase the dramatic effect.

Politics
Christopher Hitchens and Isaac Chotiner have criticised the film for failing to indict the appeasement of the era. '''Far from distancing himself from Chamberlain's appeasement policy, King George VI dispatched a car to meet Neville Chamberlain when he returned from signing the Munich Agreement with Hitler in September 1938. The King and Chamberlain then stood on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, acclaimed by cheering crowds.'''

Hitchens and Chotiner also criticised the film for failing to portray Edward VIII’s possible sympathetic attitude to Nazi Germany. In a 1933 home video, the King is seen demonstrating and teaching the Nazi salute to the current Queen of Great Britain, Elizabeth II. '''Moreover, in 1936 after the abdication scandal, which saw Edward VIII lose his crown, the new Duke of Windsor married Wallis Simpson, and for their honeymoon, they traveled to Nazi Germany. They were photographed meeting Hitler, both receiving and giving the Nazi salute. The British government also tapped King Edward's phone lines prior, and during, his reign because they feared that he and Wallis Simpson both had pro-Nazi sympathies.'''

The Guardian corrected the portrayal of Stanley Baldwin as having resigned due to his refusal to order Britain's re-armament, when he in fact stepped down as "a national hero, exhausted by more than a decade at the top".

Hugo Vickers, an adviser on the film, agreed that the alteration of historical details to preserve the essence of the dramatic story was sometimes necessary. The high-ranking officials, for instance, would not have been present when the King made his speech, nor would Churchill have been involved at any level, "but the average viewer knows who Churchill is; he doesn't know who Lord Halifax and Sir Samuel Hoare (later Lord Templewood) are."

Hitchens and Chotiner also challenged the film's portrayal of Winston Churchill's role in the abdication crisis. '''It is well established that Churchill encouraged Edward VIII to resist pressure to abdicate, whereas he is portrayed in the film as supportive of the Duke of York and not opposed to the abdication. Churchill even gave a speech to Parliament in support of Edward, which Hitchens describes as him throwing away the political capital that he had.'''

Realism
Martin Filler acknowledged that the film legitimately used artistic licence to make valid dramatic points, such as in the probably imagined scene when George V lectures his son on the importance of broadcasting. Filler cautions that George VI would never have tolerated Logue addressing him casually, nor swearing, and the King almost certainly would have understood a newsreel of Hitler speaking in German. Filler makes the larger point that both the King and his wife were, in reality, lukewarm towards Churchill because of the latter's support for his brother during the abdication crisis.

Commenting on the film's final scene on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, Andrew Roberts has written, "The scene is fairly absurd from a historical point of view – Neville Chamberlain and Winston Churchill were not present and there were no cheering crowds outside Buckingham Palace." But Roberts praises the film overall as a sympathetic portrayal of the King's "quiet, unassuming heroism"…The portrayals by Firth and Bonham Carter are sympathetic and acute, and the movie’s occasional factual bêtises should not detract from that."