The King's Speech

I detect a monarchist conspiracy behind the 14 BAFTA nominations fof 'The King's Speech':

It was always going to be a winning  combination. Colin Firth the darling of the quintessentially English Sunday evening period costume drama; posh-totty Helena Bonham-Carter; George VI - it was him and the queen mum wot won the war for us; and of course the impending marriage of People's Prince William and the lovely Kate -she's so common just like us- Middleton.

Actually George VI may have been shy and reluctant to  become king ,and struggled with a little-understood disability - but probably the best thing to be said of him is that he wasn't actually an open Fascist sympathiser like his elder brother Edward VIII. 

He certainly voiced the prevalent attitudes of the  upper classes of that generation - anti-Semitic and favouring appeasement with Nazi Germany in the 1930's.  And despite the myths - he and his family didn't sleep through the Blitz in the tube station alongside his fellow Londoners but in the safety of a bunker under Buckingham Palace.  Which was why he was in fact boo-ed and jeered on his first visit to the East End.

Still I predict street parties next summer and open-air screenings of this palliative nonsense.