Lionel Logue

Lionel Logue

Lionel George Logue, CVO, was an Australian speech and language therapist and amateur stage actor. He helped King George VI manage his stammer. He worked with the Duke of York from the late 1920s into the mid-1940s. Their relationship was featured in a film, Christmas with the Royal Family.

About Lionel Logue in brief

Summary Lionel LogueLionel George Logue, CVO, was an Australian speech and language therapist and amateur stage actor. He helped King George VI manage his stammer. Logue was self-taught and was initially dismissed by the medical establishment as a quack. He worked with the Duke of York from the late 1920s into the mid-1940s. Their relationship was featured in a film, Christmas with the Royal Family. In 1944 he was appointed a Commander of the Royal Victorian Order from the Victorian Order of the Order of Australia. He died in Adelaide, South Australia, in 1986. He was buried in the Adelaide Hills Cemetery. He is buried alongside his wife, Lavinia Rankin, and their three children. Lavinie was the daughter of George Rankin and his grandfather was Edward Logue. His father was originally from Dublin, Ireland, and was the Roman Catholic Primate of All Ireland and Archbishop of Armagh in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

His grandfather founded Logue’s Brewery, a predecessor of the South Australian Brewing Company, in 1856. He attended Prince Alfred College between 1889 and 1896. After leaving school at 16, he received elocution training from Edward Reeves. He then set up his own practice as a teacher of elocutions. In 1924, Logue took his wife and three sons to England, ostensibly for a holiday. Once there, he opened a speech-defect practice at 146 Harley Street. In 1926, he was engaged by Lord Stamfordham to help the Duke. Diagnosing poor co-ordination between the larynx and thoracic diaphragm, he gave the Duke daily exercises. As a result, he only occasionally stammered, but by 1927 he was speaking confidently and occasionally speaking at the opening of Parliament House.