A fresh-feeling account of the war years in London and the sympathy the public held for their royal family.
A wartime sequel to Logue and Conradi’s The King’s Speech (2010).
Logue, whose father inherited the private papers that Australian-born speech therapist Lionel Logue kept over the nearly quarter-century of his working (and friendly) relationship with King George VI, finally sifted through the rich cache just before the film version of The King's Speech was completed. The material that the author found would influence the film’s essential detail of the relationship between the two. Logue realized how loyal his grandfather had been in keeping private the work he and the king were doing to perfect the king’s speech, especially during the key war years. He also realized how essential Lionel’s assistance had been in bolstering the king’s public image, particularly after the fresh abdication of his more popular brother, Edward VIII, in 1936. As the second son, George (“Bertie”) was never meant to be king, and his speech impediment was a source of early humiliation and shame. After visiting numerous doctors (nine by one count), Bertie arrived for a first visit at Lionel’s London office on Harley Street in 1926 and made great strides by following the unorthodox breathing techniques of the not-quite-doctor and fairly untrained Logue (there was no such discipline as “speech therapy” at the time), who also recognized the psychological component to stuttering. Logue and Conradi swiftly move through the war years, providing fascinating details about how the British coped through the Battle of Britain—and the meaning for regular Britons that their royalty suffered along with them. When radio formed their major community contact, the speeches by the king—practiced by him and Logue, who eliminated difficult words and replaced them with deliberate phrasing—proved to be a salve to the public and inspired resolve.
A fresh-feeling account of the war years in London and the sympathy the public held for their royal family.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64313-192-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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