By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-68) is one of the great orators of the twentieth century. Several of his speeches have become part of the ‘canon’ of great oratory, and because he was delivering many of his speeches at landmark political events and in the era of television, we are lucky enough to hear him speak the words he wrote.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Winston Churchill (1874-1965) was UK Prime Minister twice, between 1940 and 1945 and then again between 1951 and 1955. During his first term as Prime Minister, in the Second World War, he wrote and delivered some of the most rousing and powerful speeches ever given by a national leader, with ‘we shall fight them on the beaches’ being perhaps the finest of them all.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
What makes a great and iconic speech? There are numerous examples of brilliant orators and speechmakers throughout history, from classical times to the present day. What the best speeches tend to have in common are more than just a solid intellectual argument: they have emotive power, or, for want of a more scholarly word, ‘heart’. Great speeches rouse us to action, or move us to tears – or both.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Let’s begin our exploration of Churchill’s famous ‘fight them on the beaches’ speech with a few problematic statements:
In June 1940, Winston Churchill gave a speech which roused and inspired the whole of Britain. He pledged to ‘fight on the beaches’ and never surrender. When he read the words out on the radio, his wartime audience were greatly impressed by them.
Only the middle sentence of the above paragraph is 100% correct, but we’ll come to the myths and misconceptions surrounding the speech in due course.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘The Agony and the Sweat’ is the title sometimes given to one of the most memorable Nobel Prize acceptance speeches: the American novelist William Faulkner’s acceptance of the Nobel Prize for Literature at Stockholm in 1950. In his speech, Faulkner makes his famous statement about the ‘duty’ of writers: that they should write about ‘the human heart in conflict with itself’, as well as emotions and themes such as compassion, sacrifice, courage, and hope.