his biographer as being "delicate of body but not of mind, stuttering of tongue but not of intellect, pushing boldly forward in things Divine," was invoked against stammering. A famous Briton who stammered was King George VI. George VI went through years of speech therapy, most successfully under Australian speech therapist Lionel Logue, for his stammer. This is dealt with in the Academy Award-winning film The King's Speech (2010) in which Colin Firth plays George VI. The film is based on an original screenplay by David Seidler, who also stuttered until age 16. Another notable case was that of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Churchill claimed, perhaps not directly discussing himself, that "[s]ometimes a slight and not unpleasing stammer or impediment has been of some assistance in securing the attention of the audience ..." However, those who knew Churchill and commented on his stutter believed that it was or had been a significant problem for him. His secretary Phyllis Moir commented that "Winston Churchill was born and grew up with a stutter" in her 1941 book I was Winston Churchill's Private Secretary. She also noted about one incident, "'It's s-s-simply s-s-splendid,' he stuttered—as he always did when excited." Louis J. Alber, who helped to arrange a lecture tour of the United States, wrote in Volume 55 of The American Mercury (1942) that "Churchill struggled to express his feelings but his stutter caught him in the throat and his face turned purple" and that "born with a stutter and a lisp, both caused in large measure by a defect in his palate, Churchill was at first seriously hampered in his public speaking. It is characteristic of the man's perseverance that, despite his staggering handicap, he made himself one of the greatest orators of our time." For centuries "cures" such as consistently drinking water from a snail shell for the rest of one's life, "hitting a stutterer in the face when the weather is cloudy", strengthening the tongue as a muscle, and various herbal remedies were used. Similarly, in the past people have subscribed to theories about the causes of stuttering which today are considered odd. Proposed causes of stuttering have included tickling an infant too much, eating improperly during breastfeeding, allowing an infant to look in the mirror, cutting a child's hair before the child spoke his or her first words, having too small a tongue, or the "work of the