The King’s Speech “is basically a film about what positively smashing folks the royals are,” Joe Queenan wrote two days ago in The Wall Street Journal. “It’s a film that’s infatuated by those awfully swell people up at Balmoral who wear kilts and shoot foxes. Americans used to turn up their noses at this sort of stuff. But that was before Upstairs, Downstairs and Merchant & Ivory intoxicated the entire republic with the rustle of crinoline and the shimmer of lace.

“The King’s Speech is not, after all, a film about a Welsh coal miner who overcomes a speech impediment. It is not a film about an Aussie doughboy trapped on the beach at Gallipoli who overcomes a speech impediment. It is a film about spiffing chaps and the spiffing folks who help them to be even more spiffing.”