I had a speech impediment as a child. Throughout first grade, I met with a speech therapist weekly to help me get rid of my lisp. It was very much about muscle training. Even now, if I am very tired, or on the rare occasions I have too much to drink, my lisp will return.

This is the personal background I brought to watching The King’s Speech. I not only enjoyed the movie very much (I do love Colin Firth), but I also found the scenes of actual speech therapy feeling very familiar, despite the differences between lisps and stutters.