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 […]
‘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 […]
‘I Have a Dream’ is one of the greatest speeches in American history. Delivered by Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-68) in Washington D.C. in 1963, the speech is a powerful rallying cry for racial equality and for a fairer and equal world in which African Americans will be as free […]
Here’s a question for you. Who was the main speaker at the event which became known as the Gettysburg Address? If you answered ‘Abraham Lincoln’, this post is for you. For the facts of what took place on the afternoon of November 19, 1863, four and a half months after […]
Hamlet’s ‘What a piece of work is a man’ speech is among the most famous prose speeches from Shakespeare’s play. It has become well-known, and is sometimes used in television and radio adverts; it was also memorably recited by Richard E. Grant’s character Withnail at the end of the British […]