The tree of the movie

Re. The King's Speech:

• Someone was telling me that her mother used to be a secretary at Buckingham Palace around the time of The King's Speech and from her office window could see Lionel Logan across the other side of the courtyard lifting and lowering his arms for the pauses in the speech.
  
• Readers may be interested to learn that our old friend the Sitka spruce plays a significant cameo role in the film. There is a key episode, designed to demonstrate the deplorable grip Wallis Simpson has established over her lover, the new King Edward, and, by extension, his realm: as Helena Bonham Carter (the Duchess of York) and Colin Firth ( the Duke of York) approach Balmoral by car, they pass foresters felling mature conifers. Helen Bonham Carter/the Duchess of York deplores the felling, murmuring ‘Poor spruce’ . The felling is mentioned again as being Wallis’s idea of improving the view. during a scene at a louche party being hosted (inappropriately) by Mrs Simpson after they have arrived at the castle,
  
• Spruce is a tree already firmly rooted in Hollywood. In 1947, film magnate Howard Hughes made an enormous wooden seaplane, and named it the Spruce Goose, after the tree it was made from (info courtesy of the March 2011 issue of Vanity Fair).
  
• Spruce also makes excellent paper - hence the sponsorship of Moffat Book Events by Forestry Purposes, a company that grows spruce just outside Moffat.