David Seidler (born 1937) is a British-American playwright and film and television writer. He was most successful for writing the play and the screenplay for the film The King's Speech, for which he won the Academy Award and a BAFTA for Best Original Screenplay.

Seidler was born in London, where he spent his early childhood. He grew up in an upper-middle class Jewish family. His father Bernard was a fur broker who bought bales of pelts on commission. He had an office in New York City. When the Seidler family's apartment in London was bombed during the Blitz in World War II, they relocated to Lingfield in Surrey. Later in the war, the family resettled in America. The ship they sailed on was a member of a convoy of three ships; on the way one of these, carrying Italian prisoners-of-war from North Africa, was sunk by German U-boats. It was on the voyage to the US that Seidler developed a stammer, before he celebrated his third birthday.

Seidler subsequently grew up in Long Island, New York. Seidler believes that his stutter might have been a response to the emotional trauma of the war. By the time he was a teenager he was well aware that his stammering made others uncomfortable, so he often chose to keep quiet.

David (Hebrew: דָּוִד, דָּוִיד, Modern David Tiberian Dāwîḏ; ISO 259-3 Dawid; Strong's Daveed; beloved; Arabic: داوود‎ or داود‎ Dāwūd) was, according to the Hebrew Bible, the second king of the United Kingdom of Israel and, according to the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke, an ancestor of Jesus. David is seen as a major Prophet in Islamic traditions. His life is conventionally dated to c. 1040–970 BC, his reign over Judah c. 1010–1003 BC,^{[citation needed]} and his reign over the United Kingdom of Israel c. 1003–970 BC.^{[citation needed]} The Books of Samuel, 1 Kings, and 1 Chronicles are the only sources of information on David, although the Tel Dan stele records "House of David", which some take as confirmation of the existence in the mid-9th century BC of a Judean royal dynasty called the "House of David".

David is very important to Jewish, Christian and Islamic doctrine and culture. In Judaism, David, or David HaMelekh, is the King of Israel, and the Jewish people. Jewish tradition maintains that a direct descendant of David will be the Messiah. In Islam, he is known as Dawud, considered to be a prophet and the king of a nation. He is depicted as a righteous king, though not without faults, as well as an acclaimed warrior, musician, and poet, traditionally credited for composing many of the psalms contained in the Book of Psalms.

A Darcy Before I Die - satirical poem by Ronnie Taheny (c) 2008

Colin Andrew Firth, CBE (born 10 September 1960) is an English film, television, and theatre actor. Firth gained wide public attention in the 1990s for his portrayal of Mr. Darcy in the 1995 television adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. In 2011, Firth received an Academy Award for his portrayal of King George VI in The King's Speech, a performance that also earned him the Golden Globe, BAFTA and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Actor, amongst others. The previous year, he received his first Academy Award nomination, for his leading role in A Single Man, a performance that won him a BAFTA Award. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2011.

Firth was born in England. His mother, Shirley Jean (née Rolles), was a comparative religion lecturer at King Alfred's College Winchester (now the University of Winchester), and his father, David Norman Lewis Firth, was a history lecturer (also at King Alfred's) and education officer for the Nigerian Government. Firth has a sister, Kate, and a younger brother, Jonathan, who is also an actor. Firth's parents were raised in India, because his maternal grandparents, Congregationalist ministers, and his paternal grandfather, an Anglican priest, performed missionary work abroad. Firth spent part of his childhood in Nigeria, where his father was teaching.