The King's Speech Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
47 free The King's Speech trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This The King's Speech trivia quiz covers Tom Hooper's 2010 Best Picture winner and the true story behind it. It follows Bertie from the Wembley stammer through the Harley Street sessions, the Hamlet recording, the row over 'treason', the abdication of Edward VIII, the coronation rehearsal in Westminster Abbey and the 1939 wartime broadcast that Logue conducts like an orchestra. Behind the scenes it covers David Seidler's own childhood stammer and the decades he waited at the Queen Mother's request, the reading that Tom Hooper's mother attended, the script hand-delivered to Geoffrey Rush's house, Logue's diary discovered nine weeks before filming, the wide lenses and hard light, the cathedral standing in for the Abbey, and the ratings fight over 17 swear words. A separate round covers the real Lionel Logue, from Adelaide to Harley Street to the Royal Victorian Order, and the historians who quibbled with the film. It ends with the 83rd Academy Awards, where the film's 12 nominations turned into four wins. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries before publishing.
30 of 47 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who directed The King's Speech?
Tom Hooper
Tom Hooper threw out the script's original 'Hollywood ending', a faultless final speech, because the real 1939 broadcast shows a king still managing his stammer rather than cured of it.
Q 02Who plays King George VI?
Colin Firth
Colin Firth found the stammer hard to shake: months after the film opened he admitted it still crept into his own speech, and got worse the more he thought about it.
Q 03Who plays Lionel Logue?
Geoffrey Rush
Geoffrey Rush got the script in a brown envelope pushed through his front door; his manager sent the producers a four-page email scolding them, then added that Rush liked it.
Q 04What nationality was the real Lionel Logue?
Australian
Australian: Adelaide-born Logue taught elocution and acting in Perth before moving to London; in the film the King's advisers distrust him precisely because he holds no formal qualifications.
Q 05Who plays Queen Elizabeth, Bertie's wife?
Helena Bonham Carter
Helena Bonham Carter was shooting Harry Potter on weekdays, so all her scenes were filmed at weekends; a producer said it felt like being 'the divorced parent who could only have her at weekends'.
Q 06Where is the opening scene of The King's Speech set?
The Empire Exhibition at Wembley
The Empire Exhibition at Wembley, in 1925: to fill the terraces the crew sat inflatable dummies in period costume among some 250 extras, then added more people digitally.
Q 07What does Logue have Bertie recite while listening to music on headphones?
Hamlet's 'To be, or not to be'
Hamlet's 'To be, or not to be': with music blaring in his ears Bertie cannot hear himself and reads it fluently, as he learns only when he angrily plays the recording at home.
Q 08What does George V tell Bertie will play a significant part in the royal family's future?
The wireless
The wireless: after his Christmas broadcast the old King grumbles that it has turned royalty into 'actors' who must enter people's homes, then makes Bertie try the microphone himself.
Q 09Who plays the ailing King George V?
Michael Gambon
Michael Gambon plays the old King as a tough martinet; historian Andrew Roberts judged that the film's George V comes off harsher than the real man, a price paid for drama.
Q 10What does Bertie accuse Logue of when Logue suggests he could be a good king?
Treason
Treason: stung by the hint that he could supplant his brother, Bertie storms off and ends the sessions, and comes back to Logue only once the abdication has made him King.
Q 11Who plays David, the Prince of Wales who becomes Edward VIII?
Guy Pearce
Guy Pearce plays the elder brother although he is seven years younger than the actor playing Bertie; the real brothers were friends, historian Andrew Roberts noted, not the sneering rivals shown.
Q 12Why can't Edward VIII marry Wallis Simpson even after her divorce?
Both her former husbands are still alive
Both her former husbands are still alive, and the Church of England, which the King heads, then refused to remarry anyone divorced while an ex-spouse was living.
Q 13Which actor plays the Archbishop of Canterbury in The King's Speech?
Derek Jacobi
Q 21Which actor did the director of The King's Speech originally want for George VI?
Hugh Grant
Hugh Grant turned the part down, as did the writer's own first pick, Paul Bettany, so the actor who made the role famous was only the third choice.
Q 22Which cathedral stood in for Westminster Abbey in The King's Speech?
Ely
Ely was picked over Lincoln, the closer architectural match, because its sheer scale let the crew build not only the coronation but the days of preparation before it.
Q 23Lancaster House, hired at £20,000 a day, played the interiors of which royal home in The King's Speech?
Buckingham Palace
Buckingham Palace may be the plainer of the two: Queen Victoria is said to have told Lancaster House's owner, 'I have come from my house to your palace.'
Derek Jacobi's Archbishop Lang has Logue investigated and tells the new King that his therapist has no formal training at all, which sets up their furious row in the Abbey.
Q 14In The King's Speech, how does Logue say he first came to treat speech defects?
Helping shell-shocked Great War soldiers
Helping shell-shocked Great War soldiers: he tells an outraged Bertie that no formal qualifications existed when he began, and the real Logue did treat returned servicemen who had lost their speech.
Q 15What provokes Bertie into speaking fluently in the Abbey?
Logue sitting in King Edward's Chair
Logue sitting in King Edward's Chair, the ancient coronation throne, goads Bertie into shouting that he has a voice, and he realises he has just raged without a stammer.
Q 16Which honour does the closing title card say Logue received?
Commander of the Royal Victorian Order
Commander of the Royal Victorian Order: the order rewards personal service to the monarch, and George VI made Logue a Member on the eve of his coronation, then promoted him in 1944.
Q 17Who wrote the screenplay for The King's Speech?
David Seidler
David Seidler developed a stammer as a small child during the war and took heart from hearing George VI, a fellow stammerer, rally listeners over the radio.
Q 18Who asked the writer of The King's Speech to hold the story back for as long as she lived?
The Queen Mother
The Queen Mother, George VI's widow, sent word through her private secretary that he should wait, so he shelved the idea in 1982 and returned to it only after her death twenty years later.
Q 19Who phoned the director of The King's Speech after a fringe play reading to say 'I've found your next project'?
His mother
His mother had been taken by friends to a reading of the unproduced play at a tiny north London theatre, the first play reading she had ever attended, and rang him straight afterwards.
Q 20Through which relative did Logue's diaries reach The King's Speech's makers weeks before filming?
His grandson
His grandson Mark Logue was turning the diaries into a book, and the makers reworked the script to fit them, adding lines that the King and his therapist had really exchanged.
Q 24Which London power station doubled as a BBC radio control room in The King's Speech?
Battersea
Battersea is a Thirties building, so its disused control room, with acres of period dials, could pass for the BBC room that sends the King's speech around the world.
Q 25Why was The King's Speech shot on unusually wide lenses?
To convey the King's feelings of constriction
To convey the King's feelings of constriction: lenses as wide as 14mm, held close to the actors, subtly bend the picture, an effect one critic mistook for a fisheye lens.
Q 26Which piece of music plays under the King's climactic 1939 broadcast in The King's Speech?
Beethoven's 7th Symphony, second movement
Beethoven's 7th Symphony, second movement, was only the editor's temporary track, but the film's composer refused to replace it, saying he could never compete with it.
Q 27Who composed the score for The King's Speech?
Alexandre Desplat
Alexandre Desplat recorded it through vintage microphones once made to order for the royal family and dug out of the EMI archives, to give the music a dated sound.
Q 28The swearing in The King's Speech earned it which US rating, matching that year's Saw 3D?
R
R, which bars under-17s unless an adult comes too: the US board judged a stammering king's therapy-room curses as severely as a horror film's gore, to the director's open dismay.
Q 29What certificate did British censors first give The King's Speech, before an appeal brought it down?
15
15, for strong language: the distributors appealed, and the board relented because the swearing was aimed at nobody and came, as its advice put it, 'in a speech therapy context'.
Q 30Which Hollywood mogul considered re-editing The King's Speech to cut its swearing for a lower rating?
Harvey Weinstein
Harvey Weinstein, its American distributor, wanted a tamer version that families could see; the director answered that he would not support cutting the film in any way.